Unlikely
by RocketKat123
Summary: The whole thing was very unlikely, I was there and I still hardly believe it myself, but there was one thing in particular that was so unlikely that it shouldn't have happened in a million years: a secret was uncovered by sheer chance. Oh, but it wasn't any secret, no, not at all. So now...have I sparked your curiosity yet? (Set during Movie)
1. Chapter 1: Not Exactly Qualified

**I was going back through this ****fic to revise it for Ao3 and I found some glaring mistakes and a few inconsistencies. I apologize to anyone who has already read this fix and I am now spamming your inbox, but I just couldn't let it go. If you would like you can read it again, but if you don't want to you don't have to. There aren't really any major changes.**

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Chapter 1: Not Exactly Qualified

It was already after midnight and I was dimly worried that my feet were going to fall off. I sighed in relief and let the tension in my shoulders go as I walked up the steps of the old boarded up church.

I had hitch hiked to this top secret hideout of mine all the way from Philadelphia, after being chased (again) by an organization of which I did not know the name of; I just call them The Lab.

These attempts to capture me were becoming more and more frequent. Three years ago I was on a streak of four years of not having to put up with The Lab's crap, and a year ago I hadn't had any run-ins for a whole year, but just in the last few months there had been three. I know it couldn't be that I was getting particularly careless; I don't stay in one place for more than a few days, I never ride the bus (because of cameras), and so many other things that I don't do to stay safe. Something must have happened to make them desperate for my capture, and thusly more vigilant in watching when ever I popped up on the grid.

To say that it was a bit disconcerting would be an understatement, but there was not enough strength or energy left in me at this very moment to worry about said problem.

You see, I had had to ride a third of the way in a beetle bug with three college girls on a road trip talking about their boyfriends or the guys they want to be their boyfriends (or someone they just wanted to do something I'd rather not say, with) the whole time. I then stood by the highway for about another hour until a car with two beefy guys that looked like bodybuilders picked me up. I knew I would regret getting in that car, but I was getting anxious standing exposed on the side of the road. It turned out they were both perverts, and I had to tuck and roll. I hadn't even bothered to dust myself off before running away as fast as I could. So yeah, I was tired both mentally and physically.

Before I opened the door of the church, I stretched my mind out and scanned for anybody who may be watching or any other squatters that might have already laid claim to the vacant church for the night. There was nothing worse than an angry hobo that was being denied his beauty rest, and I should know.

Luckily, there was no one home, but then again there really shouldn't be because the old church was outside the city limits of a tiny little suburb—that could hardly be called a suburb—of New York City. Across the street was an apple orchard, and on both sides were open lots grown up with weeds. There was basically no civilization for a couple of miles until you got to NYC.

More importantly, though, there was no one around period.

I opened the door and a waft of musty stale air blew into my face, making my midnight black hair flutter just a bit.

I shambled in tiredly and threw my pack down next to a dusty pew. I heavily flopped on it, regretting the action instantly when a plume of dust rose up and sent me into a coughing fit that made my eyes water and my throat raw. The loud coughs eventually turned into inexplicable hysterical laughter. The laughter eased to mild chuckles and then came a lone sob.

Sometimes I had my moments of lunacy, but who could blame me? Randomness was a side effect of the torture and insanity that was my life. It really is a wonder that I wasn't _completely_ crazy.

I pulled the ratty blanket that I've had forever out of my pack and stretched out on the dusty pew. I eventually drifted into the dark and dangerous realm that was sleep.

* * *

"Sir, are you sure you want to call her in, she's not exactly qualified," Agent Maria Hill said to the director of SHIELD with a very skeptical tone.

They were both looking at the girl's picture on the screen; it was just a picture taken by a security camera. She was looking down and away, but enough of her face was captured to be recognized.

"We've been tracking her on and off for nine years. Besides we're dealing with an energy cube, who better to call on than someone who can control energy," the Director replied.

He had wanted to bring her into the Avengers initiative, anyway. The Council, however, hated her. In fact, they openly expressed that they wanted to eliminate her, saying that she was a danger to everyone, but because she was just about number one on the potential threat list was exactly why Fury wanted to bring her in; he wanted to keep a close eye on her.

However, he certainly understood Agent Hill's position.

"Sir, do I have to remind you of the incident?" The agent paused, not sure if she should say more, for fear of her job. She was willing to risk her station, however, to keep that girl or whatever the hell she was off the ship. "Not only that, she also suffers from PTSD and multiple phobias. S_he is unbalanced_."

Hill was, admittedly, afraid of her. She had been there ten years ago when SHIELD had first tried to recover the girl form the ashes of "The Lab," as she had called it. The second time, they had succeeded in tranquilizing her and bringing her back to base (it was a short lived success though). But Hill had seen first hand what she could do and on more than one occasion did Hill see her colleges get roasted alive by the demon child. She was the reason that Hill had retired so soon from being a field agent; the two interactions with the girl had put the fear of God into the agent.

The Director sighed and leaned on the console, "She has issues, but they all do, and I think she might be a game changer," the Director paused for a moment, "and if we're going to talk about damage to the public domain, Banner has had many more 'incidents' than Miss Thorn."

_Yes, but Banner can't disintegrate something or someone just on a whim_, Hill wanted to say but she could see that she wasn't getting anywhere. When the Director had his mind set on something, nothing, not even appending doom, can change it.

"I'll call Coulson and tell him he's got her," Maria said before turning away and walking off.


	2. Chapter 2: Nagging Memories

**I'll say it again, I'm not making any really major changes.**

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Chapter 2: Nagging Memories

_I looked from the picture in the encyclopedia to my own drawing in comparison. Seeing a mistake, I quickly erased and fixed it. My tongue poked slightly out of my mouth in concentration._

_I paused for a moment to rub at my temples, trying to assuage a headache. The incessant thrum of the speakers behind the walls, emanated a low frequency 24/7 that deprived me of my powers, and constantly gave me headaches. _I would think I would be used to it by now,_ I thought bitterly to myself._

_Sometimes the scientist would take me places where they didn't have the speakers constantly blaring out the frequency, so I could give them a show. Of course this was with a tone of armed guards with tranqs. I would do tricks like a trained animal and then they would scribble down notes. When they were done, they would take me back into the numbing thrum of the speakers. _

_No one could hear it but me, and I didn't really hear it so much as I felt it as it disrupted the very core of my being._

_I cherished those days when they wanted to see my powers._

_My breath quickened as I sensed the scientist and his team of armed guards before he entered my room, before he was even at my door. Even in the thrum, I could still sense people. The scientist told me that that may be because it is one of my most base powers._

_I sprang out of my desk at which I had been working diligently on a sketch prior, and jumped into my bed quickly covering myself with my blanket. I tried to slow my breathing to pretend I was asleep. _

_It was very unlikely that he would just let me be even if they bought it, but I had to try something to get out of their usually excruciating tests._

_The door opened and the Lab Coat stood in the door for a second wondering if I was actually asleep or not. He made up his mind and decided that he didn't care one way or another and called out rather loudly, "Bella, sweetie, you need to get up. We need to do some tests." _

_He came over to me and started to reach out to shake me. I quickly rolled out of bed away from the out stretched hand. _

_He shook a finger at me light heartedly. "Naughty girl. Why would you try to pretend to be asleep when you know I was coming to get you for a test?"_

_I shrugged feinting casualness, when I was really about to fall apart at the seams. "Maybe I don't want to do any tests."_

_The lab coat gave a hearty laugh, which at another time long ago would have made my chest burn with hate and anger, but now I found the emotions too tiring. "Oh, how silly of you. Of course you want to do some tests," he said, pretending to know what I want._

_He gestured for me to follow him and reluctantly I obeyed. I knew his guards would just drag me out of there anyway so why resist and put myself through that misery._

_We went down a few hallways before ending up in an exam room. My breath quickened to the point I was nearly hyperventilating. I wanted to run way, oh how I wanted to run, but that would do no good; there was no escape. _

_I wish Mary was here at least, I thought to myself. She was like a surrogate mother to me. In reality she was just my mentor (a teacher and a counselor all in one), hired by The Lab, as I called my place of torment, and in league with the evil scientists in it, but she was the only person in my life that had never caused me pain._

_First they took my vitals, checking my blood pressure an heart rate (noticing it was a little high). Then the scientists took some blood and tissue samples. After that I was walk across the hall into a room with an MRI machine._

_The table of the MRI was pulled out and I was placed on it. As several Lab Coats strapped me down to the table I saw the man that brought me in fill one of the syringes with an amber fluid. I whimpered as he approached me. He said something that I didn't quite catch as he injected me with the serum. _

_It took a moment before the full effects of the serum started, in which time the table was retracted into the machine. When the affects finally hit, searing pain spread through every fiber of my being, however, I refused to scream. I savagely bit my tongue and clamped down on it hard enough taste the metallic tang of blood._

_After hours of pain (or at least it felt like hours) it seamed to start waning and my other senses started to return. The table pulled back out slowly with an electronic whir. _

_I heard someone behind me say something but it was just gibberish to my still idled brain. After a few moments my senses cleared enough to make sense of my surroundings again and I realized that a man was filling up a syringe again, this time with a clear fluid. I bit down on my tongue to keep myself from making any pathetic noises that threatened to come out of my throat. I shut my eyes as hard as I could as he stuck the needle into my arm and kept them closed even after I was taken into the machine. I nearly opened my eyes after several minutes of nothing but then it hit. _

_I gasped at the sudden pain and the shock. My back arched so far that I thought it would snap. My body slammed back down on the table and I instantly started convulsing. _

_Images of random things started to flash before my eyes but they were horrible: half-burnt bodies laying in piles. Lots and lots of bodies, bodies clothed in black uniforms and white lab coats, Mary might have even been in one of those piles. Then an image of gray skinned monsters flying in the sky and walking on the ground, both causing death and destruction._

_I actually tried to hold on to that picture for a second. It was really weird; they actually seem to be coming out of a hole in the sky. I was calm and watched apathetically like it was just a video. _

_Yeah, they are definitely coming out of a hole in the sky; weird. It also looked like they were in a big city, like Chicago or New York City._

_I faintly heard worried shouting, and I barley felt another prick of a needle in my arm before it was lights out._

* * *

I jerked awake and found myself drenched head to toe in a cold sweat. I breathed in several ragged breaths to get a hold of myself. I had to get a hold of myself. I couldn't—no, no, the people around me—couldn't afford for me to have a fit. My powers never hurt me, just the people around me.

For several minutes, maybe even an hour, I laid away, afraid that if I close my eyes I would return to that place. Eventually, my eyes started to become heavy and no matter how hard I tried I could not stop myself from letting them fall closed.

As I was starting to drift off again I thought maybe I sensed someone coming close to the church, but it was too late to be worried about that now. I was already more than half asleep.

Only a few minutes later a loud banging on the door of the church made me bolt upright again. I quickly tried to calm myself with deep breaths, and when I finally got my brains together, I remembered to stretch my mind out to scan for other people.

Besides the person at the door, there were ten surrounding the building and on the roof. Of course, why else would someone track me down and come knocking in the middle of night? It was interesting though that they had the courtesy to knock; they don't usually do that. Actually they never did that.

To say the least, my curiosity was peaked.

I shoved the blanket off me and quickly strode to the door. I yanked it open a little too forcefully out of annoyance and nearly got a fist in the face by the person at the door who had obviously not expected me to open the door so fast. I quickly regained my composure from nearly being punched and scowled at the well dressed man in the doorway.

He wore a suit and tie, and everything about him screamed organized and tidy. It got on my nerves quickly.

"If you're looking for the funeral home, it's down the road a couple miles," I said pointing in the general direction, "If you're a Jehovah's witness—and I say this in the nicest way possible—fuck off." Yeah it was rude, but it was my way of laughing in the dark.

The man gave a mirthless chuckle and clasped his hands in front of him. "I'm Agent Coulson of Strategic Homeland Intervention—" he began to say before I slammed the door in his face.

I managed to get all the way to my "bed" and flop back down on it, when Agent Coulson of the Shit Head Idiot Entourage of a Lousy Douche began knocking again just to piss me off.

"Go away!" I shouted.

"Miss Thorn, I'd just like to talk," he shouted through the door.

I sighed lengthily. "Why can't they just fucking call me Raven?" I muttered to myself. "Oh yeah?" I shouted back to the Agent, "What about the other lackeys placed around the building; do they want to talk too?" I said sitting up.

"They're precautionary," he shouted back.

I huffed and stood up, walking a ways to the door. "Of course, a precaution against the demon child, if she gets too _agitated_," I sneered.

"It's not a precaution against you. It's a precaution for the people that have been chasing you all day."

Now that was a shocker, but it probably wasn't true anyway. Yet it got me to go to the door and open it.

"You're lying," I accused.

"No, I'm not, and you know it."

With the door closed, I couldn't get a good enough reading, but now that there was open space between me an him, I could be pretty sure that what my senses were telling me were true. He was not, in fact, lying.

I was shocked into silence, but my shock quickly turned into annoyance. "Well, where were you this morning when I was being chased out of Philadelphia?" I said putting my hands on my hips.

"'The Lab' as you call it, Is very hard to track, and its actions are usually undetectable, but trust me, we try to keep them off you're tail as much as we can."

I narrowed my eyes at the agent. SHIELD was the highest level of security in the world, and it couldn't get a fix on something? They didn't really know anything about "the Lab" besides what I had told them did they? I shook my head, deciding that I would save this to ponder on later.

"Okay, whatever, what did you come here for?"

"Something's come up and we need to take you in," he said.

Alarm bells instantly went off in my head. "What do you mean by 'take me in'?" I said with my arms crossed over my chest.

It was almost as if he was pained to say this but he managed to get it out, "We need your help."

I burst out laughing. "Wait a second, SHIELD is asking for my help? Little ol' me? What's made you guys so desperate?"

"We're edging on a global catastrophe all thanks to an energy cube and a despotic alien," Coulson deadpanned with a completely expressionless face.

I blinked several times before saying, "Yes, of course, that makes total fucking sense."

"I can't let you in on any more unless you come with me."

"Come on Coulson; give me a little more information. You and I both know that you can. You just said that you can't because you were hoping to trick me with my own curiosity," I said shrewdly.

"I did spark your curiosity, though, didn't I?" he said.

"Admittedly, you did, but I'm not going with you even if this person threatens to destroy the democratic institution—and God forbid—the American way of life," I said sarcastically.

"I don't think you quite understand. I meant alien as in from outer space. And he threatens to destroy the whole world not just—God forbid—the American way of life," Coulson said back nearly, or just as sparkly.

"You must think I'm an idiot," I deadpanned.

"You can check for yourself if I'm lying of not," the agent said simply.

"Sometimes it acts up. Also, it's not an exact science, Mr. Coulson," I said paranoiacally.

Coulson gave a small sigh through his nose. "I'm not going to pretend I can make you come, you can do whatever you want and no one can stop you, but the world needs you." He stopped and thought for a second, "and you still owe SHIELD for the damage that you did."

My face must have darkened because Coulson shifted uncomfortably at that moment, realizing that he might have touched a seriously no-no subject.

The memory of that horror fest cropped up and for a moment I was stuck in the past having to re-experience them.

_Every cell in my body burned as I tried to rein my powers back in. However, the beast was out of its cage, and it didn't want to go back. It lashed at me burning me from the inside. The pain was excruciating, but it wasn't as bad as what the poor fools in front of me were experiencing. Whatever it was I couldn't stop it. It burned inside me as long as my own terror lingered. As more and more SHIELD agents came to address the situation, the more bodies piled up, and the more I wanted to scream in horror and revulsion._

I sucked in a whooping breath and shook my head hard like I was physically trying to shake out the memory.

I got a hold of myself and glared up at the agent. "You can leave now, I'm not interested." I said coldly and without expression.

His face didn't change. "The guy that we're after has already murdered about sixty people, if he wins there will be thousands if not millions dead," he said, all in a monotone.

I got curious again and dug just a bit deeper, reading his emotions just a bit more closely. He was anxious, but not of me as I had suspected before. No, he wasn't just anxious, he was terrified, and only the years of SHIELD training was keeping him in line. I sensed the grief and loss for his fallen comrades as well bubbling just underneath the terror.

I sighed and looked down at my hands, which were now twiddling nervously. "I don't think I can really help you anyway, unless you want me to destroy something," I sharply looked back up at him, "which I'm not willing to do."

"You know you can do more than just destroy things," he tried to say encouragingly.

I looked down at my feet unable to say anything. He couldn't understand.

He sighed and started to walk away, leaving me standing in the door. I faintly heard him say as he was walking away, likely talking into an ear piece, "Pack up your things, we're done here."

I glared at the floor. I knew what he was doing, reverse psychology, but if SHIELD was really desperate enough to send an agent to retrieve me—an unintentionally destructive and volatile…thing…which they don't really like in the first place—then the whole world was most likely in serious trouble. A trained agent nearly wetting his pants was certainly a bad sign, too.

It was bad enough, however, that I had no control what so ever over parts of my powers, that being my empathy and slight sense of precognition, but the other part was much worse and much, much more dangerous.

The dark side of my powers was something I hated. It had brutally killed and hurt people. Now SHIELD was calling on me to use my evil powers, possibility to save the world.

Suddenly, the thought of my dream popped into my head. The gray monsters in the last image I saw made no sense but I shivered at it all the same.

As a car engine started I sighed to myself, knowing what I was about to do was monumentally stupid in my opinion, but I couldn't just sit here and do nothing while the world burned, if it really is in danger.

"Agent Coulson, wait, I changed my mind!" I yelled across the small church parking lot to him as he began pulling out of it. I began to run for his car.

He stomped on the breaks, and I yanked the passenger door open.

"I knew you would," he said somewhat smug, "Come on, get in."

I raised my eyebrows. "Wait, _you_ want to take me in right _now_?"

He shrugged, "Of course. What did you expect? A team of armed agents forcing you into an armored vehicle?"

_Yes._ "You do have the armed agents part," I said.

He shrugged again.

I remembered my stuff and said to the agent, "Hold on, wait a sec." I ran back into the dusty church, quickly grabbing my backpack and stuffing my blanket back in. I ran out the door for the second time. I hastily threw my stuff in the back seat and got in shotgun.

Coulson handed me an iPad-like device, "This should get you up to speed." I carefully took it, my hand strategically placed on the opposite side, farthest away from the agent's. I noticed it was translucent and turned the device over examining it.

"You tap the screen to turn it on," Coulson commented.

"I wasn't looking for the 'on button'. How does this work?"

The agent shrugged. "It's a complicated device, therefore it's a complicated explanation. I don't have time to explain it to you"

"Which means you don't know how it works," I said looking up at him with a challenging smirk.

"No, I know how it works; it would just take too long to explain."

"Mmhmm, sure," I said mostly to myself.

Coulson began driving toward the city that never sleeps. "I need to make another stop before we get to where we're going." Coulson said.

I looked over at him suspiciously, "And where exactly are we going?"

Coulson smirked and shrugged his shoulders. "To a secret SHIELD air base."

I sighed and tried to release the tension in my shoulders. Why did I even get in the car if I'm going to be so suspicious of every little thing, I told myself.

"So where are we headed right now?" I said turning on the device. I started to flip through it not paying attention to anything until I came to a picture of a man with pale blue-green eyes and almost shoulder length black hair that was slicked back. His face looked familiar except for the cruel shark like smirk on his lips and a malignant glint in his eyes. There was an itch at the back of my mind. I had to know this man, but from where I had no idea. I tore my eyes away from his picture long enough to read the name at the bottom: Loki of Asgard.

"How about Stark Tower?" Coulson answered snapping me out of my trance.

I looked up with a frown, "Why are we going there?"

"You're not the only one we're calling in," he answered simply.

"Oh. That makes sense," I commented.

It was silent in the car for a while until Coulson spoke again, "To be honest with you, I was a bit worried that you wouldn't agree to come along after reading your file."

"Then you probably know that you're going to regret asking me to come," I said dismally.

Coulson gave a tiny sigh through his nose and I felt a twinge of shame come from him. "I'm sorry I brought up the incident, it wasn't your fault."

I shook my head smiling sadly at his apology. "Then whose fault was it?"

The car was filled with an oppressing silence and my last words hung in the air all the rest of the way.

We arrived at our destination and parked across the street. Coulson unbuckled and started to get out but stopped when he noticed me following suit.

"Maybe you should stay in here, I'll just be right in and then right out."

I snorted contemptuously, "And miss meeting the world famous Tony Stark? No way. I want to see if he's as annoying as everyone says he is." I had snuck into one of his expos (not because I'm a fan girl, I was just in California at the time) and I already knew he was a showboat from that. I just wanted to know so I could brace myself if we have to work together.

Coulson gave a knowing sigh, "He is."

As we made our way to the building, I heard a swish of air and saw a glimpse of a familiar gold and red robotic super suit before it disappeared above a ledge.

As I looked up at the building something nagged at the back of my mind, but it was quickly gone.


	3. Chapter 3: Avengers Initiative

**All Right, so this chapter is almost completely different from the ****original, but it still doesn't change the story.**

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Chapter 3: Avengers Initiative

"So you know this guy pretty well, huh?" I asked as agent Coulson and I walked into the lobby of Stark Tower.

"Eh, I wouldn't say I knew him _well_," Coulson said.

He pulled out his phone and began tapping on it. Suddenly the elevator doors opened. "Right after you ma'am," the agent said archly.

"All righty then," I said and walked into the elevator.

Coulson did some more tapping on his phone. "Stark, we need to talk," he said into it.

There was a small pause before the person on the other line said, "You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark, please leave a message."

"Stark, this is urgent," Coulson said on the other end.

"Then leave it urgently."

At that moment the elevator stopped. When the doors of the elevators opened to admit us, the first thing I heard was a sarcastic, "Security breach," from the man on the couch which was, of course, Tony Stark himself.

I turned sharply to Coulson. "Are we breaking in? You didn't tell me that. I already have enough shit on my record; I don't need breaking and entering, too," I hissed up at the agent.

He didn't even spare me a glance when he shushed me.

"Phil, come in," the woman next to Mr. Stark who was most certainly Pepper Potts said cheerfully. She got up and walked to the agent whose first name was apparently Phil.

"Um, his name is agent," Tony said trailing after Pepper.

"I can't stay," Coulson said walking out of the elevator with me in tow.

"We're celebrating." Pepper looked over to me noticing my presence for the first time, "Who's this?" She said her smile not wavering but her brow wrinkled.

Of course I had to act weird and not give her a direct answer. "The name Thorn, Raven Thorn. Aka Special Agent Black Bird. Aka-aka double oh five. Charmed," I said with what I thought was a very convincing British accent. I did a little mock curtsy to top it off.

Pepper raised an eyebrow doing the "bitch please" face. She probably had to deal with worse on a daily basis. She turned to Phil looking for a clearer answer that I was obviously not willing to give.

"She's…just being funny. I'm taking her to a SHIELD facility. I had to stop here first but for the same reason I'm taking her in." Coulson held out to Stark a tablet device that was like the one he had given to me, "We need you to look this over."

The billionaire made a baffled expression shaking his head slowly. "I don't like being handed things," he said and didn't make any move to take the device from Coulson.

"That's right because I love being handed things, so lets make a trade," Pepper said happily as she took the file from Coulson and gave him the champagne glass and did the reverse with Tony. Tony glared down at the device in his hands, then at Coulson, then finally at me, and then back to Coulson. "Consultation hours are between eight and five every other Thursday."

"This isn't a consultation."

"Is this about the Avengers?" She asked then realized that she shouldn't have and tried to amend by stating jokingly, "Which I know nothing about."

Tony started to move away from our little party. "The Avengers initiative was scrapped, I thought, and I didn't even qualify," he paused and looked over at me, "and I'm pretty sure she doesn't either," Tony said indicating me.

"What's the Avengers Initiative, and should I know something about it, _Phil_?" I asked looking up at agent Coulson.

"Oops," both Pepper Pots and Tony Stark said in unison.

The agent cleared his throat awkwardly. "This isn't about personality profiles any more," Coulson said, choosing to ignore me.

Stark glanced at me again. "Apparently this isn't about any kind of profiles any more."

I crossed my arms defensively. "What is wrong with my profile, and seriously, what is the Avengers Initiative? Was I in it?" I said pretty much dressing everyone in the room.

When no on answered right away, I gave an angry huff and turned to Coulson, addressing him directly. "Because if I was in any sort of 'initiative' sponsored by SHIELD, I damn well want to know about it. I think as a right, I should know about it."

"Fresh as salt she is. Hey kid," Tony Stark said. I turned to him for a moment, "basically SHIELD wanted to bring together a bunch of freaks. Miss Potts could you come over here for a moment."

I turned back to Coulson. "What is he talking about?" I asked incredulously.

Coulson sighed through his nose. "That's pretty much it. Bring in special people to form a kind of team."

"You mean freaks. Did you guys over at SHIELD have that planed out for me, and you didn't tell me, send me a note, or anything?"

"I meant special people. Technically you weren't in it, and how could we have informed you. Just look at how you reacted when I picked you up," Coulson said.

"What do you mean technically I wasn't in it?" I said ignoring everything else he said.

"You were considered for it lightly, if you could be brought in and counseled, then that idea was scrapped, then the whole thing was scrapped," he explained carefully.

"Whatever," I grumbled as I turned angrily away from the agent.

As soon as I turned around my eyes were assaulted by an awful sight: the two love birds making out. I reacted on impulse and doubled over making wrenching sounds. In my defense, I did feel physically ill; it wasn't all play. I felt aimed disappointment and exasperation at my back from Coulson, but like I cared about that.

I heaved a sigh of relief and straightened when they stopped.

Miss Pots chuckled and headed for the elevator. "Are you headed by Laguardia?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'll take you there," Coulson offered.

I rolled my eyes as they began small talk and tuned them out. I followed them into the elevator reluctantly, knowing I was going to be trapped in it while the had a conversation about nothing I cared about.


	4. Chapter 4: Coulson the Fanboy

Chapter 4: Coulson the Fan-Boy

Coulson and I finally got to the SHIELD air base he had mentioned earlier when the sky was already starting to gray with the swiftly approaching dawn. I looked around the jet that was supposed to take us to a base off the coast of some place as Coulson had put it, but was taking us no where at the moment because we were waiting on someone else to show up.

By the way that Coulson was practically vibrating in his seat with excitement I guessed it was someone he was a big fan of.

He had head phones on and every few minutes yelled something to the two pilots that were doing last minute checks on their equipment. I tried to get his attention by waving a hand in his direction. He looked up at me and pulled his head phones off.

"Who are we waiting on?" I said with a touch of impatience.

He lit up with the most expression that I had seen him display the whole night. "Captain America!" Coulson almost squealed like a fan girl; very un-agent like of him.

"Who's that?" I asked, not really caring.

Coulson frowned at me, "You don't know who Captain America is?" I merely shrugged my shoulders. Coulson scoffed but said nothing more and got back to work.

A few minutes later I heard the sounds of a pair of foot steps crunching on gravel. I got up from my seat and walked down the open ramp a bit to a see a tall, blond, very chaste looking man in a plaid button up shirt with a duffel bag slung over a shoulder. A SHIELD agent walked silently by his side as his escort.

"I hope that's the dick we're waiting on," I mumbled. I came buck inside and sat tensely waiting. "Okay, so I think the captain man is here; can we finally go? Is everything ready?" I yelled at the people in the cockpit.

The captain and his escort parted ways and he came in half way before he hesitated. I saw that he was looking at me with a raised eyebrow out of the corner of my eye. He came in the rest of the way and sat down across from me, sending me a couple confused glances on the way.

Once the ramp closed and we were buckled in, he glanced at me again. I knew that he was itching to ask the question that practically everybody asks when they first meet me.

"Well? Spit it out if you have something to say," I said bluntly.

His eyes widened a fraction in surprise of my boldness. "I was told that I would be riding with a woman named Raven Thorn," he said which was more a question than a statement.

A smile tugged at my lips, but I managed to stifle it. I lifted my chin challengingly. "I am that woman," I couldn't hold back the amused smile anymore.

He grunted in confusion and tilted his head to the side. "If you don't mind me asking: how old are you?"

I grinned wildly taking a sadistic kind of pleasure from seeing the man confused. "How old do you think I am captain?" I said honestly curious.

He looked a little taken aback by the question but shrugged and complied. "Umm… thirteen?"

Hmm, people usually said eleven or twelve; maybe I grew an inch or two.

"Actually captain I think I'm about twice that."

He blinked and leaned back in his seat. "You're telling me that you're actually twenty-six?" he said skeptically.

I spread my hands. "You can probably look it up for yourself in that briefing packet thingy that I'm sure someone gave you if you don't believe me.

The captain paused a moment then he slowly took out the tablet from his bag started to flip through files. I patiently waited while he looked for the information he desired. When he found it he glanced up apologetically.

"Wow, so you really are telling the truth," he mumbled mostly to himself.

"_Yeah_. I don't know why no one ever believes me," I said sarcastically.

"How?" he asked simply.

Suddenly I felt my heart speed up. A surge of memories swelled up and nearly drowned me. The experiments they put me through just to find out the answer to that very question.

"Um…Miss Thorn…?" the captain asked trying to get my attention.

I blinked once and came out of the memories. "What—oh, yeah… I'm not sure," I answered.

"You're not sure?" he asked puzzled.

"No, and stop asking about me. If you want to know anything there it is in your hands," I snapped.

He cleared his throat awkwardly and mumbled an apology. I internally winced as his embarrassment hit me.

Silence filled the jet. As the ride continued it started to get boring and I had to quell the erg to whine "are we there yet" like a little kid. I decided to get out my briefing packet to vanquish my boredom and, to a lesser extent, my ignorance of the situation. I pulled the device out of my pack and turned it on.

I searched the data bank for Captain America and came up with a quite good bit of information. I quickly skimmed the dossier and was surprised to find that he was actually ninny-two years old (not really sure why I was surprised, I'm a lot older than I look).

Once I was done with that I picked up where I left off with Selvig's notes on the Tesseract. I already knew the fundamentals and most of the terminology because I was already going through college courses when I was around ten (and actually around ten, I didn't just look ten years old), so I saved about two hours by not having to look up every little thing.

I can say what I like about the Lab, but it at least did not keep me illiterate. I suppose all those hours of education and activities were just an attempt to distract me from the tortures they put me through, though; to make up for all the bad and try to gain my trust. What a crappy childhood I had.

As I got finished reading about Selvig's notes on the Tesseract, a thought popped in my head. There was something about this situation with SHIELD and the Tesseract that just felt...off. Why would SHIELD be in energy? That wasn't their field at all. As I thought more and more about how wrong it felt the more I wanted to discard the subject. I could worry about it later when the world wasn't in danger.

I came to the link for this Loki guy again and clicked on it. I read in dismay at the damage that he had already caused. Supposedly he had brain washed one of SHIELD's best agents and was using him for his dastardly purposes. Poor guy he's likely to have some major issues once this is all done and is brought out of it—if he's brought out of it. I also read that along with the agent, Loki brain washed Dr. Selvig. Tsk, tsk, this Loki person has been very naughty.

I looked at his picture and once again I felt that I had seen him from some where. I shook my head. If I had seen him some where before—which was highly unlikely—then there would likely have been a confrontation. He didn't seem like a happy camper. I know I would have remembered him.

I looked up when the pilot informed us that we were only about forty minutes from 'home base'. Coulson got up from his control panel and strode over to his childhood hero that he was still dying to actually talk to but couldn't before because he had to deal with some stuff.

The Captain spoke first though, "So, this Dr. Banner was trying to recreate serum they used on me?"

Coulson leaned on the wall and nodded, "A lot of people were. You were the world's first superhero. Banner thought that gamma radiation was the key to Erski's original formula."

Curious now I looked up Dr. Banner. I also new about some of his research, and a tiny bit about his…erm…little problem, but mind you that was only because I dug and dug and dug after I was _there_ in Harlem when he had to fight a monstrosity the people of the world are now calling the Abomination.

"It didn't really go his way," Steve murmured watching a video of another instance when green giant went berserk.

"Yeah, but when he's not that thing the guy's like a Steven Hawking," Coulson said. The Captain looked up at him confusedly, obviously not knowing who the heck that was.

"He's like an Albert Einstein," I supplied and Steve nodded in understanding.

There was a small pause and finally Coulson's fan boy-ness reared it's head, "I gotta say it's an honor to meet you. I mean I sort of met you, I watched you while you where sleeping," I snickered and Steve looked down and made a face like he was thinking 'well that's not weird at all'.

"I mean I was present while you were unconscious from the ice," Coulson tried to amend, "You know it's really just a—just a huge honor to have you on board this..."

"Well I hope I'm the man for the job" Steve said in a quiet voice.

"Oh, you are, absolutely," Coulson said without any doubt in his mind that this was true.

"We made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input." the agent said proudly.

"Uniform?" Rogers asked and not for the first time frowned in mild puzzlement, "Aren't the stars and strips a little... old fashion?"

Coulson looked at Steve with a grim expression. "With everything that's happening and all that's about to come to light, people might just need a little old fashion." A cold feeling crept into my stomach. I pushed that feeling away and got back to my reading.

There was a long and welcome silence.


	5. Chapter 5: Look But Don't Touch

Chapter 5: Look but don't Touch

When what seemed like hours and not just forty minutes passed, the pilot finally announced that we have arrived at our destination. I looked ahead out the windshield and saw a huge ship with jets of all kinds on deck.

"Is that some kind of air craft carrier?" I asked Coulson, amazed by the sheer enormity of the thing.

"Not exactly." Coulson said without looking up from his work, already knowing what I was talking about.

"What do you mean?" I said frowning slightly.

"You'll see." Again he said without looking up, but there was a bit of amusement in him and when I looked over at the agent I saw a shadow of a smirk.

We landed and as we were getting out, a woman with shockingly red hair that had to be fake, came up to meet us. Her eyes lingered warily on me, obviously knowing who I was.

"Agent Romanoff: Captain Rogers and Miss Thorn," Coulson said to the agent, taking great pleasure in introducing his child hero, but introducing me just to be polite.

"Raven Thorn," I grumbled under my breath.

I greeted her with a curt nod and Steve supplied a polite 'ma'am'.

"Hi," Agent Romanoff turned back to Coulson, "They need you back on the bridge. They're starting the face-trace."

"See you there," he replied.

We started to walk, to where, I had no idea, but I implicitly followed them not wanting to get lost in the mess of people loading cargo onto jets and agents training and all the other bedlam.

"There was quite a buzz around here when you were pulled out of the ice," Agent Romanoff said trying to start a conversation, "I thought Coulson was going to swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?" Before I could stop myself, I gave a quiet snort of laughter. As soon as it was out I looked around sheepishly. Thankfully no one heard with all the other noise.

"Trading cards?" Rogers said.

"They're vintage, he's very proud," Agent Romanoff said with a hint of amusement.

I smirked and slightly shook my head. "I bet he is," I murmured under my breath.

"Dr. Banner," Rogers suddenly called to a man that looked very lost. Banner was so startled he actually jumped a little but relaxed when he saw who had called his name.

"Oh, yeah, hi. They told me you'd be coming," he turned to me and slightly raised an eyebrow, "They also said something about a Raven Thorn." He was skeptical about a kid being apart of this whole death defying mission, but not as much as you would expect. He must have read something about me, or maybe he just didn't get surprised, or both.

"Yep, that's me." I said in a chipper voice.

He politely offered his hand, no threat at all but I shrunk back from it.

I winced when I felt a wave of shame come from him as he took back his hand.

"I guess you know about the... thing." He said with his head slightly lowered and his lips tight.

"It's not you I-I just don't like to touch people… b-because of my power. You see I'm an empath, I can feel people's emotions, and when I touch people it's like touching their soul… I know that's probably...impossible for you imagine, but…it's very unpleasant," I tried to explain. I'm not sure why I was even bothering, but there was some kind of inexplicable need for him to like me.

Truthfully, I had been lying about how my powers worked. I had gloves on and when I had gloves on I could pretty much touch someone as much as I want, it was skin to skin contact that issued a 'mental connection' or reading someone as I call it.

I just really don't like people touching me (or me touching people)...at all. I guess you're wondering why I didn't just ay that. Well lets just say I'm not a very trusting person and I don't like to reveal my weaknesses or personal information (which it is both) to people I just met... Or people in general.

Now I suppose you would think the empathy thing would be personal information, and it kind of is, but I know for a fact that SHIELD knows and has that in my file.

Rogers looked between us, thinking frantically of something to say to relive the awkward situation, and thankfully came up with something, "So word on the street is your the man that can find the Tesseract," Steve said trying to ease the tension and move away from the awkward tension.

Banner turned back to the captain. "Is that the only word of me?" he said looking around nervously.

"The only word I care about." Steve said kindly to the doctor, but not entirely honest, I might add.

"Ditto." I said under my breath as I pulled at the fingers of my glove in a nervous habit.

There was a small pause before Dr. Banner tried at conversation. "I guess this is all strange to you..."

Steve glanced over at a drill sergeant figure yelling at a group of sweaty agents jogging across the deck, "Well, this is actually kind of familiar," he said with a small nostalgic smile as if he was remembering his life back in the 1940's when he joined the Super Soldier program.

"You three might want to step inside in a minute, it's going to get a little hard breathe," Agent Romanoff said. Suddenly alarms and sirens started going off. The deck started to tremble and a male voice sounded over the intercom telling everyone to clear the deck.

"Is this a submarine?" Rogers said in an incredulous voice.

Dr. Banner gave a skeptical look, "Really, they want me in a submerged pressurized metal container?" I was thinking basically the same thing. They would have to be crazy to want to trap two very dangerous people miles under the waves—although I was thinking mainly about how dangerous I was. Really I didn't even consider the fact that the man in the burgundy colored button-up shirt standing next to me could transform into a giant green rage monster if something "agitated" him.

The sound of turbines revving made my stomach clinch, and the ocean seethed as they rose out of the water.

Nope it wasn't a submarine it was just a giant air craft that would be holding hundreds of precious lives thirty thousand feet in the air. No biggie. Actually, no, this is much worse.

"No, no, this is much worse," Dr. Banner said voicing almost my exact thoughts.


	6. Chapter 6: Dr Banner Guesses My Age

Chapter 6: Dr. Banner Guesses My Age

Miss Romanoff was right, it did start to get hard to breath, or that could have just been me starting to hyperventilate. The Captain, Dr. Banner, and I followed her inside. I stopped dead in my tracks before we even rounded the corner. There were at least fifty people in the next room, but it was hard to tell with metal walls blocking my perception.

The rest of the group noticed I had stopped. "Miss Thorn, are you coming?" Agent Romanoff asked.

I opened my mouth to say 'yes' but then closed it deciding to just nod instead. Either choice would have been a mistake.

We entered a large room filled with computers and, unfortunately, people like I knew that it would be. Outside there had been a big crowd, but I didn't mind it because it had been an open space, in here, although it was a large room, all of the people's emotions were trapped like a bad smell.

Wisps of their emotions tugged at my brain from every side of the room and I cringed as I felt the first signs of a panic attack. Between being trapped up in the air thousands of feet with thousands of people that could be hurt if something happened (by something I meant me), I was starting to go into freak out mode.

The computer closest to me blinked out and the man seated in front of it grunted in frustration.

"Raven, are you okay?" Banner said in a soft voice. I rounded on him and I must have looked pretty bad because I felt a twinge of worry come from him. He held his hands up in an appeasing gesture. I took in a gulp of air, "I'm fine," I said very unconvincingly.

The doctor cocked a brow, and said frankly "Are you sure? Because it kind of looked like you were starting to have a panic attack."

He would know, I mused.

I took several deep breaths while counting down from ten and tried hard to shove all the people in the room out of my head, not achieving much but the wisps of their minds were fainter and less over powering.

I looked back at Dr. Banner who gave a small nod but still looked and felt very unsure.

A man with an eye patch, which I assumed was the man pulling all the strings from his utter air of authority walked up to the Doctor and I. "Thank you for coming doctor."

The Doc nodded and politely took the man's hand, "Thanks for asking nicely."

"Miss Thorn," the eye patch guy said, thankfully not holding his hand out to me, "let me introduce myself. I'm Director Fury, the head of SHIELD."

"Oh, so you're the infamous Director Fury." I said smiling innocently. I'm not one to judge, but I had already decided that I didn't particularly like this guy. I didn't see any point in pretending.

The director frowned slightly and was about to say something before Banner interrupted him. "So, how long am I staying?"

"Ditto," I said crossing my arms.

Fury nodded as if to say, 'fair question'. "Once we have our hands on the Tesseract you are both free to leave."

For some reason I just really didn't like the way he said that.

"Where are you on that?" Banner asked.

The Director pointed at Coulson, indicating for him to tell us, "We're sweeping every wirelessly assessable camera on the planet. Cell phones, laptops... If its connected to a satellite its eyes and ears for us."

"We're still not going to find him in time," Miss Romanoff said with more than a hint of worry; her whole body was radiating it. How I had not noticed it before was surprising.

"You have to narrow your field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Dr. Banner said.

"How many are there." Fury said with a smirk.

"Call every lab you know, tell them to put their spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm, basic cluster recognition. We can at least rule out some places." Banner said starting to get into serious work mode. "You got some place for me to work?"

"Agent Romanoff could you show Dr. Banner to his laboratory, please?"

Agent Romanoff stood up from her crouching position next to one of the computers and walked over to Dr. Banner. "You're gonna love it Doc. We've got all the toys."

"Wait!" I called, making the pair halt, "C-can I come too?" I stuttered embarrassedly, still shaken from all the people in the room. I really needed to get out of here. Banner's face softened with understanding and he nodded even though Fury looked like he wanted to protest. I followed the agent and Dr. Banner to the lab.

"Well, you two have fun," Agent Romanoff said and left.

"Are you okay, really?" he asked, still concerned, which was very touching.

"I'm fine I just need to get used to all this and keep my mind occupied in the meantime."

The doctor had started to get to work and I had began to entertain myself by doodling on my note pad when Banner spoke again not even looking up from his work, "Frankly, I just can't believe Fury would bring in a kid to SHIELD. You're, what twelve…thirteen?"

I looked up at him a little shocked, but then a big grin spread over my face and I couldn't help but giggle when I imagined his face when I told him.

The doctor looked at me confusedly. "What?"

"You didn't read my dossier very closely did you? I'm actually around twenty-six."

Banner gapped at me but quickly closed his mouth. "If you don't mind my asking: do you have a deficiency in…growth hormone or something?" he asked sheepishly.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think so."

I tried to hide the grimace that tried to twist my mouth. I pulled my arms in close to me, as if trying to physically hold myself together. I held my breath as the memories tried to surge forth once again. I would be strong around these people. I can't be weak; not after what happened last time.

I drew in a shuddering breath. Ignoring the Doctor's concern aimed towards me, I continued. "I would have grown even slower than I already had if the scientist at the Lab hadn't injected me with lots of hormones when I was younger."

Banner furrowed his brow in thought. "You think you just grow slower than a normal person, like… you have a longer life span?" the doctor asked a little skeptical but very interested.

I closed my eyes miserably. "When they finally got the idea, they explained that theory to me." I paused, opening my eyes again and looking down at the floor, "They did tests to prove it; said I aged something around one fifth as fast as a normal person. But of course that was when they still had the courtesy to at least tell me stuff."


	7. Chapter 7: Good Show

Chapter 7: Good Show

Dr. Banner had started out talking about random subjects to distract me from my anxiety. It was partially to distract him from his anxiety as well. I had started a conversation on one of his papers, of all subjects, and the guy hadn't stopped talking science from there. He just talked while he worked. I admit I had encouraged him to keep going a couple times.

After another half hour of me listening intently to my new found science teacher, I caught sight of the algorithm that he had seemingly finished. I went through the whole thing in my head in a matter of seconds. Once I was finished I blinked in surprise

"Hey, Bruce, I think you made a mistake in your math," I said cautiously.

He frowned and went back over to the algorithm. I got up from the counter I was sitting on and went to join him. "You see, right there." I pointed out to the doctor. It was really a simple mistake (not that I was insulting Bruce's intelligence), but one that anyone could have done if they weren't paying attention.

The doctor looked at it then looked at me with raised eyebrows. "Oh, jeez," he said running a hand through his hair. "Thanks for pointing that out. It would have messed up the whole thing." He erased the mistake and put in the correct symbol before turning back to me with a sheepish look. "I, uh, guess I'm a bit… anxious."

I nodded knowingly. "Because of this place."

"Well, can you really blame me?" he said getting back to his work.

I gave a huff of laughter. "You are not alone buddy; this whole thing is just _wrong_."

I turned my head to the side sensing a person coming our way, and sure enough Rogers in full Captain America garb came through the door.

"We got a lead on Loki. Do you think you'd like to come?" he said to me.

I glanced a Bruce, and he shrugged. I shrugged as well. "Where?" I asked.

"To Stuttgart, Germany. You don't have to fight you'd just be backup, just in case we needed it."

I scoffed. "I'm kind of insulted that I'm just being considered as back up; I bet I could take on this Loki brat head on," I said feinting arrogance.

Steve raised an eyebrow. "Well, I suppose—"

I cut him off with a flippant wave of my hand. "I was mostly being sarcastic. Anyway lets go. I could use some time away from this flying death trap."

* * *

I had insisted on following the Captain into battle and now people were rushing past me. Lots of people. Lots of _scared_ people, and I'm an empath. To say the least I was starting to regret my decision deeply.

I swerved to miss running into a guy with a huge pot belly only to nearly run into another guy. Then a woman on the ground that apparently had a twisted ankle begged me for help. I cursed in frustration but kept moving and felt very guilty and hated myself for doing so.

I was on the fringe of the main crowd now that were being herded like sheep by Loki duplicates. I spotted the Captain at the other side of the crowd and he made a motion for me to hide behind a statue. I started to disobey but I remembered that there was a crazy alien screaming for every one to kneel. Everyone finally did get down on their knees but you really could not blame them.

The crowed, as a whole, was one huge body of fear, but as for the creature standing at the front of the crowd, well, he was practically drowning in his own euphoria.

"Is this not simpler," he said, his voice shaky from all the insane pleasure that coursed through his veins. I shivered at the touch of it on my mind. It was like a drug, both pleasant and torturous at the same time. And his mind was so completely over powering it almost drowned out the fear of the crowd.

"Is this not your natural state?" he asked mockingly. "It's the unspoken truth of humanity**:** that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes life's joy in a mad scramble for power…for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end you will always kneel."

I peeked over the edge of the pedestal of the statue. With one look at his face the itch was back. I knew him! I had to, from somewhere at some time!

Suddenly an old man rose up from the crowd of kneeling people. "Not to men like you," the old man croaked. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest for fear of the old mad's safety. He had no idea of the true nature of the creature standing before him, and therefore had no idea how badly his life hinged on his actions.

Loki laughed "There are no men like me."

"There are always men like you."

A cruel smile stole over the god's lips and he aimed the scepter at the old man. "Look to your elder, people. Let him be the example."

The end of the scepter started to glow and I could feel the energy surging within it. I literally sprang over a few people's heads to get to the old man. I wouldn't have made it in time but thankfully Captain America sprang into action at the same time and covered the man.

The energy cracked off the Captain's shield and hit Loki square in the chest, knocking him to the ground.

"You know the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above every one else, we didn't exactly agree," Rogers said, taking a little pleasure from seeing Loki fall on his face.

"The solider," Loki said lifting himself to a kneeling position so he could glare hatefully at the captain, "the man out of time." He pulled himself up the rest of the way with the aid of his spear.

Loki glanced my way. His eyes widened in horror and I felt the emotion the face implied, but it was gone in an instant. I was almost certain that I had imagined it.

"I'm not the one out of time," the Captain replied with the most cheesy cliché line. As if on cue the quinjet zoomed down and hung above our heads.

"Loki, drop the weapon and stand down," Natasha said over the speakers of the jet. Of course Loki didn't drop the weapon and instead of standing down he shot a blast of energy at the quinjet. The jet barley swerved in time to miss it.

Steve threw his shield hitting Loki in the chest but it seemed to have little, if any, effect. He advanced on Loki and punched him full in the face but still it seemed to do nothing. Loki swung the scepter several times in fast secession, hitting the shield so hard it caused sparks to fly. A blow eventually connected with the Captain and he went flying.

I stood paralyzed, Rogers was obviously outmatched and needed help, but there were still too many people running around and I was afraid if I lost just a little bit of control I could kill an innocent by stander, or the Captain.

I was forced to act though when Loki had Rogers down on one knee and the butt of his scepter was placed firmly on his crown. My heart beat rapidly and the energy surged through my veins, finally I let it go in the form of a plasma ball aimed toward Loki's head. He deflected it with his scepter just in time but he was distracted and Cap took advantage if that. He got to his feet and round house kicked the heck out of Loki.

The fight renewed but it was still uneven. Quite soon things went south again. I formed another plasma ball, this time putting more oomph into it. Rogers attempted to get up, "Stay down Cap'!" I yelled. He and Loki both looked up just in time to see me fling the mini sun the size of a beach ball. Rogers quickly ducked back down and missed the projectile that could have disintegrated him but Loki wasn't fast enough to dodge it. He was knocked on his butt and attempted to get up.

Suddenly, an obnoxious rock song came over the jet's speakers and I couldn't help but look behind me and see Tony Stark in full Iron Man armor.

"Watch out, kid," Stark said, hijacking my earpiece.

I whipped around to see that Loki had gotten hold of the scepter and started to point it at me. I lifted my hands to put up an energy shield, but Stark landed between us and all the weapons in the Iron man suit came out.

"Don't even think about it Reindeer Games," Tony said and Loki glared at him but threw the scepter aside and held up his hands.

I crossed my arms and glared at the billionaire's back. What a showboat. Yet, _I_ came up beside Stark and childishly stuck my tongue out at Loki. _Now who's the showboat_, I though.

The Captain joined us. "Stark," Rogers greeted.

"Captain," Tony turned to me, "and Miss Thorn, I'm a bit surprised to see you here."

I rolled my eyes, "I wouldn't want to miss all the fun," I paused for a moment, "and, just call me Raven."


	8. Chapter 8: Reindeer Games and I

Chapter 8: Reindeer Games and I

We were crowded in a tin can thirty thousand feet up in the air again, but that wasn't what was bothering me this time. Loki sat across from me staring like a hungry wolf would a deer with a limp. That wasn't what made me a ball of nerves, however. What really set me on edge was that god damn itch! That little niggling at the back of my mind trying to tell me something. every time I looked at him that feeling reared its ugly head. I tried to listen to the conversation between the two men standing above me but it was no use; there is just no way to ignore it with him so close.

I tugged at the fingers of my gloves in a subconscious nervous gesture. I scolded myself when I found that I was so openly displaying my feelings.

Loki gave me a wolfish grin. "Do I unnerve you?" he said mockingly but in almost a whisper so the others didn't notice.

"In what universe would a guy staring at you menacingly not be unnerving?" I said in an equally quiet voice.

"I'm merely trying to understand how a Midgardian can hold such power. You showed only a tiny fraction of it but I can sense much more within you." he said.

"Okay, whatever," I said trying to act nonchalant, "but I suppose I'm not your average Midgardian."

"Oh, I know. Barton has told me many a wonderful thing about you, like "the Lab" and the little incident that happened the day you discovered the true extent of your powers," he paused to relish my shock. The creature smirked and continued, "Certainly the most powerful of your team yet you stand on the side lines and let the others do the fighting only to drop in when absolutely necessary. Why? Is it because you're afraid of what you can really do?"

"Hey, don't talk to her," Rogers said overhearing our little conversation for the first time.

"Oh, we were just having a pleasant little chat, isn't that right _Bella_?"

I felt as if I had just been slapped. My fists clinched in my lap and every muscle in my body stiffened.

"How do you know that name?" I managed to grind out through clenched teeth.

Suddenly, a huge crack of lightning flashed by the quinjet. I heard a small, almost inaudible, sudden intake of breath from Loki. I was the only one who noticed this but then Loki looked up at the ceiling and his discomfort was quite apparent.

And yet…I didn't feel any emotion from him. I started to worry on this and realized that the whole time on the jet I hadn't sensed anything from him. I would have worried more on the matter had Steve not brought me out of my thoughts with his snide remark. "What's the matter, scared of a little lightning?"

"I'm not overly fond of what follows," he said dryly, still looking up at the ceiling.

I cocked my head. What comes after lightning? Destruction? Fire...? Thunder? As soon as that thought ran across my mind, a thud sounded on the top of the quinjet. Tony quickly grabbed his helmet and put it on. He opened the door for the quinjet, and a giant of a man jumped down from the roof of the jet to stand on the ramp. Stark advanced on him, but the billionaire went flying in the opposite direction from the impact of the man's hammer, also colliding with Captain America as he flew back. I stood up as the blond giant grabbed Loki and headed for the door.

Admittedly, I stood there in shock like a deer caught in the headlights.

Tony got up, his ego bruised. "Now there's that guy."

"Do you think he's a friendly?" Steve yelled over the roar of wind coming through open ramp.

"It doesn't matter. If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract is lost," Tony said in return. He started toward the ramp, obviously getting ready to go down there and start crap without thinking any of this through.

"Stark we need a plan of attack."

"I have one**:** attack." With that, Tony launched himself out of the jet.

Steve huffed at Tony's brashness and grabbed a parachute.

Natasha noticed. "I'd sit this one out Cap."

"I don't see how I can," he replied tersely.

"These guys are from legend; they're basically gods," Natasha said, stating what should have been obvious, but apparently wasn't for the two men.

I stood silently glaring at the open ramp, mostly ignoring the conversation.

"There's only one God, ma'am , and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that." He jumped without another word.

Wordlessly, I inched my way down the ramp after the captain.

"Raven, get back in here!" Natasha said with her finger on the button that I assumed would close the ramp. "What are you doing!?" she yelled.

I turned to her slightly. "I was talking to that bastard when Thunder Head interrupted. I'm not going to just let that stand." Without another word, I jumped out.

I didn't even take a parachute with me. You're probably thinking, 'are you insane?!', no I'm not—well maybe—but I'm not suicidal, mostly.

I angled my body down into a dive. When I could see the ground I summoned the energy and it swirled around me. It converged and solidified into a smooth, transparent, slightly shimmering sphere.

I crashed down in my magic bubble safely suspended in the middle with strings of energy. A spray of dirt and rocks went up from the force of the impact, creating a crater. When the dust settled I released my hold on the energy. It swirled again and dissipated like smoke.

I headed in the direction of flashing lightening. I lit a Lantern which was just an orb of benign light. You can stick your hand right into it and nothing would happen. Sometimes it could be handy to be a freak of nature.

I raced through the trees at a speed no human could go. Along with all my other 'gifts', I could put to shame any Olympian. I was no super solider like the captain, but I was stronger and faster than any human. And besides that, my life involved a lot of running, so I had to be good at it.

I skidded to a halt when I saw Loki leaning against an outcrop by a cliff. I hadn't even sensed him. My stomach dropped when I realized that he must be shielding himself from my powers.

He saw me and grinned that wolf grin that he was so good at. I heard the darkest string of laughter and shuddered. "So _Bella_, it's just you and I," Loki drawled.

"How do you know my real name? I don't think even SHIELD knows." I said just managing to keep the snarl out of my voice.

"They don't." He said simply with a sly smile.

"Then how?" I couldn't keep from snarling this time.

"Ah, it's a secret, but if you ask the right question... I might let you in on it."

My hands clenched unconsciously. "Will you tell me what the right question is?" I managed to grind out past gritted teeth.

Loki scoffed dramatically. He pushed off from the bolder he was leaning on and advanced toward me. My frustration and anger disappeared in seconds and what was left in their place was fear. There was an insane glint in his eyes that I hadn't noticed earlier that made me want hide and curl up in a ball; it reminded me of the sadistic glee that I would see in the eyes of the scientists at The Lab. However there was something even more worrying in his eyes: the desperation of a cornered animal.

I knew that look well; it's the one I've tried to hide on a daily basis. But not only that, I had seen it on many faces, too many actually, and I knew that when people are desperate they can do terrible things. Well, no, terrible isn't bad enough to describe some of the things I've seen, depraved is more like it.

Loki stopped only a few feet away from me and I had to squash the urge to back up a step. This was the first time I noticed how many feet he had on me.

"If I told you what question to ask that would completely defeat the purpose," he said coming just one more pace closer, making my heart almost leap out of my chest. All of a sudden, he took a step back and turned away from me. I silently let out a pent up breath.

"Now, let me ask you a question: what is your reason for doing this?" he asked.

I was surprised by the question so much so that I stuttered like an idiot. "F-f-for doing what, exactly?"

"You know what, playing the hero, letting SHIELD recruit you. Usually you would be scurrying around, hiding where you could, concerned with yourself," he said with his back still turned to me.

"Well, hello, I have to live on this rock too," I practically growled at his back.

"I mean to rule this realm, not destroy it. You are a common waif; you live in squalor either way," he stated apathetically.

There was a pause before I said very quietly, almost whispered, to myself, "Well maybe I feel like I owe some people," I literally slapped a hand over my mouth. How could I be so stupid?! I gave him ammunition and not some dinky little bullet, an atomic bomb!

He turned to me slowly which gave the eerie feeling of a predator going in for the kill. "You came to make up for all those you slaughtered—and you think that this will be enough?" He said with a sneer.

"Did I say that?" I said nervously.

"You are a monster; a beast with no control. Why would you even try when you know it will end in disaster—will end just like last time."

Suddenly he stopped advancing and plastered a mocking smile on his face.

I sensed him before I heard the swish of air. Never had I been so happy to see someone in my entire life.

"Come now brother, let us not harass the natives, we must be going," the new Asgardian said clapping a hand on Loki's shoulder.

Even though he looked tired and rather haggard I couldn't keep myself from growling at him, "I am not a _native_, I'm working with the imbeciles that thought it would be a good idea fight a Norse god."

The giant blond was taken aback and clearly bewildered, but he asked, "Would you like for me to send your teammates for you?"

I didn't answer. Instead, I clasped my hands behind my back and calmly walked past him to the edge of cliff.

"Our ride is picking us up in that _little_ clearing you made, right?" I said pointing to the huge area of destruction about two miles away.

"That is what your people said."

I nodded to myself and backed up from the edge a bit.

"Okay, I'll meat you there," I took a running jump from edge and soared several yards before I started to come down in an arch. At that time I formed a shield around me, and as before fell safely in my bubble. I didn't even let the dust clear before I let down the shield and took off running at about fifty miles per hour.


	9. Chapter 9: Business Conference

Chapter 9: Business Conference

As soon as the quinjet landed and the ramp opened, I started to storm out. I was already out of the jet when I felt a careful hand gently grab my arm. The carefulness or the gentleness made no difference and my heart nearly leaped out of my chest at the physical contact. Before I could make the better judgment not to, I viciously yanked my arm out of the person's grip, and turned around with a snarl on my face to see who had committed the heinous crime.

Captain Rodgers had his hands up in an appeasing gesture but did not seem overly surprised by my feral reaction. The snarl quickly melted from my face to be replaced with a mildly annoyed scowl.

"What?" I said testily.

"Are you okay? It looked like you were pretty shook up back there," he said concerned.

I forced the tension out of my face and managed a reassuring smile. "I'm fine."

He looked at me warily, obviously not buying my act. "Why did he call you Bella in the plain?"

I blinked at him once before wordlessly turning around and heading away from the Captain.

He jogged to catch up to me. "I'm sorry, but I'm just worried for a member of my team," he said slightly winded and as he talked his breath made a cloud of fog in the dim moon light.

I was more than just a little surprised by his windedness and to see his breath steam. I had hardly registering the change in temperature and the thickness of the air. I was even more surprised to realize that I was more resistant to some things even the great Captain America couldn't stand up against. This only fueled the conviction behind my next statement

"You're worried about me because you can't get past what you see. I am not a damn child, I'm not even human." At that I took off running.

* * *

I slipped inside a ladies restroom. Thankfully it was a private bathroom and I could lock the door to the outside.

I took off my gloves and thoroughly washed my hands. I then splashed an excess amount of water into my face before deciding it was enough.

Gripping the sink white-knuckled with both hands, I looked somewhat disgustedly at the girl in the mirror who wore the same expression.

The girl's eyes (which at the moment had dark half circles under them) were ice blue except for right around the outer edge where it was a kind of green-blue color. Her hair was black as raven wings, and it was cropped short just below the jaw line and unevenly.

After about ten minutes of glaring at myself, I sighed deeply and pushed off from the sink.

I replaced my gloves on my hands and started to walk out when I realized that all down the front of my jacket was soaked. I sighed again and took off my jacket to dry it under the hand dryer. In stead of putting my jacket back on I just tied it around my waist; my long sleeve shirt already adequately covered my skin.

I glanced inside the lab and upon seeing that the doctor was not present, I went to the conference area where I was sure he and the rest of the team would be.

When I got there the meeting was already underway. I seated myself quietly in an empty chair beside Steve, not disturbing the conversation one bit. In fact no one even noticed me coming in except for Steve and that was probably only because I sat right next to him.

I caught Steve inspecting me out of the corner of his eye and gave him a half-glare.

"So it was a setup." said Dr. Banner in an exasperated voice.

"Apparently," said Agent Hill, "while Loki was distracting us with his little show, Barton was infiltrating a high security lab." I noticed there was a mental flinch from Natasha when Hill mentioned the agent's name.

Agent Hill suddenly held up a hand for silence, "Fury's ready to send the feed through."

* * *

As the door of the cell clicked close behind the demigod, he turned to face his captor.

"You try to escape," Fury said starting up a rant, "you put a scratch on that glass," he opened the shoot below the cell, "Thirty thousand feet down in a steel trap. You get how that works?" he yelled over the screaming wind coming in through the shoot. He pressed another button and the shoot closed. Gesturing from Loki to the control panel Fury said, "Ant -boot."

The creature in the cage chuckled darkly, "It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me."

"Built for something a lot stronger than you."

"Oh I've heard," Loki said with an evil smirk. He turned to the security camera, "The mindless beast that makes play he's still a man." He looked back to Fury, "How desperate are you to call on such lost creatures to defend you?"

Fury glared at the monster with unveiled hate. "How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war, you steal a force you can't hope to control, you talk about peace and kill because it's fun. You have made me very desperate, and you might not be glad that you did."

"Oooh, it burns you to have come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power, and for what? A warm light for all of mankind to share? And then to be reminded what real power is," Loki said contemptuously.

Fury sneered and stared to walk off. "Tell me if 'real power' wants a magazine or something."

* * *

"He really kind of grows on you doesn't he?" Bruce said sarcastically.

I snorted. "Yeah, like a wart," I growled under my breath.

"Loki's gonna drag this out," Steve said drawing our attention to the important thing at hand, "so, Thor, what's his play?"

Thor looked up at the captain, "Loki has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or of any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth, in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

Cap raised his eyebrows, "An army...from outer space."

"You still get surprised, Captain?" I asked leaning against the table. He shot me an exasperated look which I ignored.

"So he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for." Banner said.

Thor turned to him sharply when he heard the scientist's name, "Selvig?"

"He's an astrophysicist," Bruce explained.

"He's a friend," Thor said in an almost thoughtful way. I got the impression that it wasn't random Selvig being Thor's friend and being taken by Loki, but then again, it seemed like hardly anything was random with Loki. He was a conniving rat.

"Loki's got him under some kind of spell...along with one of our own," Agent Romanoff said with underlying worry. She obviously cared deeply for Agent Barton.

"I want to know why Loki let us take him. He's not leading an army from his cell," said Rogers refocusing us again on the more important thing.

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki, that guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you can smell crazy on him," Bruce said using delightful metaphors and creating wonderful imagery, but unfortunately I couldn't quite agree.

"I have to take issue with you somewhat Bruce—well not with the fact that Loki's crazy, that's completely true—but that we shouldn't be worrying about him. That slime ball is here with us, and—"

"Have care how you speak," Thor said interrupting me to chastise the doctor and I, "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard and he is my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days," Natasha said sourly.

"…He's adopted," Thor said uncertainly.

Cap directing the conversation back to me, "Raven, what did you mean by that?"

I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. "He has tons of allies and…" I glanced at Natasha apologetically, "Barton is one of them. Do you think they're simply going to accept that we took him?"

"They won't be able to find us if they _are_ looking for him," Hill interjected, "We're moving constantly and if you didn't already know this, the ship is completely invisible from below." There was a drop of venom in her words that confused me until I remembered ten years ago when she was just a high up agent and not second in command. She was the one that had led a group of agents to first check out my strange situation.

I looked down and swallowed hard before I could say more. "Yes, okay, fine, but Loki is smart, brilliant actually, and this, I'm quite sure, is all apart of his plan, including, I think, a grand escape." I said in a quiet voice.

Hill narrowed her eyes and started to open her mouth to say more but was cut off by Bruce. "Look, I think it's all about the mechanics. Iridium, what do they need iridium for?" he asked.

"As a stabilizing agent," said the voice of Tony Stark as he walked into the room with Agent Coulson.

"Means the portal won't collapse on it's self like it did back at SHIELD." Tony turned to Thor as he walked by and gave him a mock apologetic look, "No hard feelings, Point Break, you got a mean swing." Thor looked at him confusedly, obviously not understanding the movie reference. "Also it means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants." Stark said as he walked over to the control panel.

"Raise the mizzenmast, jib the top sails," several of the agents below looked up at the crazy man pretending he was at the helm of a ship.

I jumped slightly as Stark yelled, "That man is playing _Galaga_. Thought we wouldn't notice but we did." I inwardly groaned at Tony's antics. He was being exceedingly obnoxious and as you can imagine my tolerance levels were extremely low at the moment.

Tony covered one eye, "How does Fury even see these?" he said referring to the controls.

"He turns," Hill answered.

"That sounds exhausting. The rest of the raw materials Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. The only major component he still needs is a power source of high energy density," as he was saying that I saw him discreetly put a bug under the control panel. I raised an eyebrow when he glanced my way. He cheekily winked and I had to stop myself from rolling me eyes. "Something to kick-start the cube."

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Agent Hill asked wryly.

"Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the extraction theory papers? Am I the only one that did the reading?" Tony said with growing annoyance.

I had on the way here. I would have said so under different circumstances, but right now I didn't have the patience to play along.

"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" asked Steve trying to move things along.

"He would have to heat the cube one hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break the coulomb barrier." Bruce said starting to pace.

"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect." Stark said.

"Well, if he could do that the he could accomplish heavy ion fusion on any reactor on the planet."

"Finally, someone who speaks English." Tony said.

"Is that what just happened," Steve muttered to himself. Confusion radiated from the captain (and everyone else too, for that matter). I turned to the captain intending to explain in words normal people can understand. "What they mean is Loki needs to heat the cube up to _very_ high degrees that would not normally be sustainable on Earth, but if Selvig has figured out to do that and then, to answer your question, no, he could use any reactor of any type."

"Isn't that what we just said?" Stark said in mock confusion turning to me.

"Yes, but I felt that I should translate for the people who don't speak geekish," I deadpanned.

"Well, aren't you so helpful. Anyway," Tony said, proffering his hand to the doctor, who kindly accepted it. "It's good to meet you Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collision is unparalleled, and I'm a huge fan of how you loose control and turn into a giant green rage monster."

Bruce looked down and gave an awkward, and not really thankful, thanks. I scowled at Stark's back. Did he even know he was being an ass or did he have to work at it?

"Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping that you might join him," Fury said walking in.

"I would start with that stick of his. It may be magical but it works an awful lot like a Hydra weapon," Steve said butting in.

I sensed Furry jolt mentally, but if face stayed its usual cool mask. "Well, I don't know about that," Fury stated, "but it is powered by the cube and I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn the two sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

Thor turned to the Director and tilted his head slightly in confusion, "Monkeys? I do not understand—"

"I do!" Cap burst out then looked around somewhat sheepishly. "I understood that reference," he tried to explain. I gave him look of pity and saw Stark roll his eyes.

"Shall we play Doctor?" Tony asked.

"This way sir."

I stayed seated as the two men started to walk out, not wanting to force myself upon them; I had already done that to Bruce.

"Hey, come on Raven," Tony threw over his shoulder.

I turned around in my seat to look surprised at Tony Stark who was now stopped and turned around.

I raised a questioning eyebrow.

"You mustn't socialize with average minds, you'll loose your edge," Tony said playfully turning his nose up with only half faked disdain. Everyone in the room rolled their eyes, including me.

I shrugged to myself and got up and trotted over to the two scientist.


	10. Chapter 10: A World Gone Mad

Chapter 10: A World Gone Mad

"The gamma rays are defiantly consistent with Selvig's reports of the Tesseract," Dr. Banner said, "but it's going to take weeks to process."

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct the rout to the Homer cluster we can clock this at six hundred teraflops." Tony said, working it all out on his own tech.

Bruce chuckled, "All I packed was a tooth brush."

I looked up from drawing in my notepad (it always soothed my nerves when I was set on edge, which I was a lot so it was nearly full…again) and looked at the two scientists. There was a total bromance going on, but for some reason I felt like there was a storm brewing.

"You know, you should really come by Stark Tower some time, you too, Teen Titian," he said turning to me momentarily.

"Oh, you did not just call me that," I mumbled putting my face in my hand.

"Top ten floors all R&amp;D, you'd love it, it's candy land." Tony continued unabashedly, walking over to Bruce.

"Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of...broke Harlem." the doctor said dejectedly.

"Hey, I was there, and by what I saw, I'd say it was not your fault," I said, trying to get the doctor to stop being so self-degrading.

"Wait, you were there?" Tony said incredulously.

I nodded. "Yeah, weird huh? I was at one of your expos before, too. Who knew we'd all actually meet one day?" When I realized that I just stroked Tony's ego, I quickly tried to amend, "Hey, don't go thinking I'm some fangirl. I had to sneak in to hide in the crowd from some goons with The Lab."

Tony snorted not believing, but said nothing. I narrowed my eyes at him; something was up.

He crossed behind Bruce but stayed close to the side of the doctor. "Well, anyway, I promise a stress free environment. No tension, no surprises," as Tony said that he jabbed his pen in the doctor's side making him jump and receiving a prompt 'ow'.

Bruce turned to Tony and looked at him like he was crazy.

I made a tsking sound and shook my head. At the same time resisting to face-palm, again.

"What, nothing?" the mad man said in disappointment.

"Hey, are you nuts?" Rogers asked entering the room. Apparently he had seen the idiotic (or perhaps insane) display too.

"Jury's out," Tony said turning to the Captain. He turned back to Bruce finding him much more interesting, "You've really got a lid on it don't you? What's your secret, mellow jazz, bongo drums, a huge bag of weed?"

"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve asked angrily.

"Funny things are."

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship is not funny—no offense Doctor."

"It's fine. I wouldn't have come on this ship if I couldn't handle pointy things," Bruce said not looking up from his work.

Tony chuckled mildly. "You're tip-toeing, big man, you need to strut," he said to Bruce.

"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark." said Steve.

All the laughter and humor dropped from Tony's eyes in an instant, "You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us in, why now, why not before?" Tony said quite seriously, all the joking was over and done with, and that scared me much more that Tony trying to provoke Bruce. "What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation without all the variables."

"So, I'm not alone in thinking this is screwy after all, lovely," I said dryly. I was kinda hopping I was just me being paranoid as usual, but if someone else thinks this situation smells fishy too then it's much more likely that my fears are verifiable.

"See, even children can see there's something wrong here."

"Hey!" My protest went ignored.

"So you think Fury is hiding something?" Rogers said, fainting exasperation when I could sense that Tony had sparked his interest.

"Captain, he's a spy, he's _the_ spy; his secrets have secrets." Tony reached over to grab a bag of blueberries that he had brought with him, off the counter and took a hand full of them, "It's buggin' him too, isn't it?" Tony said turning to Bruce.

"Uh, umm... I just want to finish with my work here and—"

"Doctor?" Steve prompted.

Bruce sighed through his nose and took off his glasses, "'A warm light for all man kind' Loki's jab at Fury about the cube."

Steve nodded, "I heard it."

"Well I think that was meant for you," Bruce said turning to Tony. Tony offered the bag of blueberries and Bruce took a few. "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower it was still all over the news."

"The Stark Tower, you mean that big ugly..." Cap would have probably said something else insulting about the tower whose owner and creator was standing right there, but Tony gave him a quelling look. "...building in New York."

"It's powered by an arc reactor, a self sustaining energy source," Bruce said, "That building will run itself for, what, a year?"

Tony shrugged, "It's just a prototype. I'm kinda the only name in clean energy right now, is what he's getting at."

"Right, so why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project. What were they doing in the energy business in the first place?"

I nodded my head in agreement. "My thoughts exactly," I said mostly to myself.

"I should probably look into that once my decryption program is finished breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files." Tony said.

"I'm sorry did you say—" Steve started to say.

"Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few minutes I'll know every dirty little secret SHIELD has tried to hide. Blueberry?" Tony said and held out the bag to Steve.

Steve narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. "And yet you're confused as to why they didn't want you around."

"An intelligence organization that _fears_ intelligence is historically not awesome."

The Captain took in a breath and folded his arms. "I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man that means to start a war and if we don't stay focused he'll succeed." he paused for a second and glanced at the doctor, "We have orders, we should follow them."

"Following's not really my style," Tony said and popped another blueberry in his mouth.

Steve put on a cold smile, "And you're all about style aren't you?"

Tony glanced up at the ceiling as if to think and said, "Of the people in this room, which is A: wearing a spangly outfit, and B: of no use?"

Steve glared at him frigidly. Even though he looked not in the least swayed that there was something going on, he was brimming full of suspicion and was even angry that Stark might be right. Tony was just flat out brimming with cold rage, and was that… jealousy?

"Guys? This might seem pretty obvious but... I don't think right now is the time to start working each other into a lather. You should listen to your own advice Cap'," I said trying to be the voice of reason since apparently no one else wanted to be at the moment.

Steve glanced at me then resumed his staring contest with Tony.

"Steve, tell me none of this doesn't smell a little funky to you?" Bruce said.

Steve finally looked way. "Just find the cube," he practically growled and stormed out of the room.

* * *

"That was the guy that my dad never shut up about? I'm wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice." Tony said.

"I feel sorry for him." I said still looking out the door where the captain had left. I turned to Tony and he was wearing a look that said 'really?'.

"You're joking," he said.

I couldn't help but give him a reproachful look for his insensitiveness. "No, I'm not. How would you feel to just wake up one day and find out you were seventy years in the future, and most of your friends are dead. Then you find that the world is worse than when you 'stepped out' when you thought you had been sacrificing yourself to make the world a better place. Then still, not even knowing how bad it _really_ is." I said, scorn clear in my voice. My chest was beginning to become tight with anger, which is exceedingly strange because I don't get worked up over stuff like this; I know how people are.

First Tony, then Steve, now me; has everyone gone _mad_?!

Tony was stunned; shocked into silence. He turned away a bit ashamed now.

There was quite a lengthy pause before Bruce finally said something, "You know Tony, the guy's not wrong about Loki. He does have the jump on us."

"What he has is an Acme Dynamite kit. It's going to blow up in his face and I'm going to be there when it does." Tony said.

"Pretty badass dynamite kit, if you ask me," I mumbled under my breath.

The conversation continued over me.

"Yeah, and I'll read all about it," Bruce said, ready to drop the subject.

"Uh-hu or you'll be suiting up with the rest of us." I looked over sharply at Bruce. From knowing him for one day, I could tell that anything related to his alter ego was a sore subject.

"Ah, you see, I don't get a suit of armor, I'm exposed…like a nerve. It's a nightmare."

_I don't get a suit of armor either_, I thought, _but I'm still doing this for, some reason_.

"I have a shrapnel cluster trying every second to crawl its way into my heart. This," Tony tapped the arch reactor, "stops it. This little circle of light is part of me now. It's a terrible… privilege."

"Yes, but you can control it." Bruce said, crossing the line from annoyance to frustration.

"Because I've learned how."

"Not the same." Bruce looked away and started to get back to his work, completely uncomfortable with the subject and wanting to discard it at once, but Tony being his usual self, just wouldn't let it go. He swiped the displays away off the screen to get Bruce's full attention.

"I read about your little accident. That much gamma radiation _should_ have killed you."

I looked worriedly between the two men, afraid of where this might go.

"So you're saying that the Hulk...that the Other Guy saved my life. That's nice, it's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what exactly?" he said scoffing at Tony's attempt to give him a pep talk.

I tilted my head to the side inquisitively; I got the feeling that he was talking about something else, too.

"Well I guess we'll find out," Tony said, probably unable to think up anything else.

"You may not enjoy that."

"And you just might," Tony said as he walked back to his work station.

I pressed my lips together in a sour line, wishing I had something clever to say that would make Bruce stop beating himself up for whatever past wrongs might have been done by the Hulk. Instead all I had was, "Well, I'm glad that you're not dead," I blurted out suddenly, "not that _that_ means much, I'm sure." The last part dripped with sarcasm. He looked over at me, shocked. Tony also looked at me.

I ducked my head embarrassedly, now becoming aware of how incredibly childish that sounded.

There was a sudden loud gurgling and I realized, a bit surprised, that it was me.

"Was that your stomach, or Godzilla?" Tony said with an over exaggerated horrified look on his face.

_Thank you, _I thought, very appreciative of the distraction. "Either one of you know where the mess hall is?"

Both men chuckled, mostly forgetting the former awkwardness.

"I think it's to the right, you know, somewhere in that general direction," Tony said.

"Oh, thanks, that helps me a bunch," I mumbled wryly.


	11. Chapter 11: Dinner with ET

Chapter 11: Diner with ET

As an agent started to pass me in the hall I tried to give a friendly smile and pulled my hand out of my pocket to give a half wave. The agent quickly looked down gave me a wide berth, speeding up his pace a bit as we walked past each other. A feeling of deep dread rolled off him.

I gave an exasperated sigh. Apparently people remembered me quite well.

Not everyone that I passed avoided me so vehemently but no one looked at me directly and all had varying degrees of fear towards me. I suppose I couldn't blame them.

I let my head droop and my eyes stayed on the floor non-threateningly, not looking up when a person passed by. That was until Thor crossed my path.

"Lady Raven, how fares you?" He said with somewhat faked cheer and a grin that I noticed did not quite reach his eyes. He also had that strange kind of look like someone who had just been deep in thought.

"Uh, great. Hey, per chance, do you know where the mess hall is; I'm starving, like literally, I haven't eaten in about two days," I said rather offhandedly.

It was a long shot that the Asgardian would know where the mess hall was (or even know what a mess hall is), but I had been wondering around hoping I would find it by luck for what it seemed in my mind like a half hour (thanks to a certain jerk face billionaire not even bothering giving me actual directions). I felt that I couldn't simply ask one of the agents, however, because I was afraid they would wet their pants when I started to approach them.

He gave me a somewhat horrified look. "That it is unacceptable. You must be fed at once. Do not worry I have been to this hall of mess; I will show you where it is."

I was a bit taken aback by the eagerness of his offer. "Well, okay, as long as you didn't have anywhere to be," I said as we started walking.

"No," he said solemnly, "I don't have anywhere I must be. I just needed to think."

It must be about his brother, I thought. I didn't know what it was like personally, but I knew it must be terrible to have family that hates you. I did sort of know how it felt to have family that was evil and despotic however. The Lab hadn't really been my family, but I had been raised there.

We walked through the doors of the cafeteria and in minutes the room was totally quiet except for the occasional whisper. There were only a few dozen people in the mess hall and almost a dozen left at the sight of us, or rather, me.

Thor took a seat at one of the many empty tables while I stepped in line. Almost instantly, half of the people in line left and went to sit with their friends to wait until I was done getting my food. The other half stood tensely looking back at me every few seconds.

I sat across from Thor. He looked up at me from a spot on the table he had been staring at in deep thought. I managed to inhale half of my chicken strips before Thor said anything, and when he did start to talk, it was about something that I did not want to discuss at present.

"Why does it seem that all the people of this organization have misgivings toward you?" he asked innocently, not having any idea of the horrors in the answer to that question.

I stopped mid chew and paused for a moment then swallowed hard. I boldly looked the thunderer in the eye.

"I killed a lot of their people; burned most of them alive." I didn't try to keep the bitterness and self-loathing from creeping into my voice. "It was on accident, but in a way that makes it worse," I said, finally looking down, ashamed. I finished off my last chicken strip, even though it tasted like sand, and my meal now felt like a stone in my stomach. "I suppose you think I'm a monster now; everyone else does."

His shock quickly abated and there was just sympathy and pity instead of the revulsion and disgust I had imagined.

I looked up from my tray of half eaten food to see that he was shaking his head with gentle reproof. "You should not be so harsh with yourself. You said it was accident, did you not?"

I sighed in exasperation. "Yes, but you don't understand. I lost control. Do you know what that means? It means that everyone around me dies; burned, like from extremely high doses of radiation. Some of them actually caught fire!" I shouted making everyone in the room look at me. Somehow it had gotten even quieter.

I drew in a shuddering breath and put a hand to my forehead. Why was I doing this, why was I torturing myself trying to explain?

I started to get up to take my tray that still had a full helping of Mac n' Cheese and mashed potatoes to dispose of the contents and leave, but Thor stopped me. "Please, sit. I will leave instead if you wish."

I paused for several moments before sitting back down slowly, cautiously. I looked down at my tray as a blush of both shame and embarrassment spread over my cheeks.

"You don't have to leave. I'm sorry. I just had one of my moments," I gave a mirthless chuckle at that.

"Let us talk of lighter subjects." Thor said with a slightly self-conscious smile.

"Yes please, and don't worry, I'm not always so melodramatic," I gave another empty chuckle.

There was a pause before the Thunderer started up again.

"On Asgard some warriors may start training at your age—or the equivalent—but is that not strange here on Midgard?" he asked not particularly interested for, as he said, this was the norm to him, but my reaction was a bit dramatic.

I threw my hands up in the air and the brought them back down and buried my face in them.

"Oh, for God s sake!" I said through my hands, "Do I have to go through this with every body?"

"Is this also a forbidden subject?" Thor said surprised but also amused by my childish reaction.

"No," I said, taking my hands away from my face, "I've just had to explain this to both Dr. Banner and the captain."

"If you do not wish to explain it again—"

"No, no it's okay. You see, I'm a lot older than I look. I'm actually around late twenties—which is an adult by the way—but I don't look it because my body ages much slower than normal people."

"And why is that?" Thor asked starting to become intrigued.

I spread my hands in a helpless gesture. "I honestly have no idea. I kind of entertained the idea that I was an alien for a while."


	12. Chapter 12: Hellfire

Chapter 12: Hellfire

I once again got turned around coming back from the cafeteria, but eventually found my way back to the lab.

By the time I got back the sun was steadily climbing over the horizon.

The two scientists were sitting on the counter looking at the same screen. Tony was the first to look up.

"Where have you been?" Tony asked distractedly.

"You know where I've been. Remember, my stomach growled louder than Mt. Saint Helens."

"For two hours?" Tony asked not looking away from the screen.

"Damn! I didn't think it had been that long," I said mostly to myself.

I looked between them noticing for the first time the mood of the room. They were excited and anxious and obviously transfixed by some stuff on the screen.

"So…guys anything interesting happen? Are you looking at…you know…_SHIELD _stuff?" I asked inferring that they were riveted to the screen because Tony had pulled up everything he had gotten through his bug he had planted on the bridge.

"Yep," Tony said.

"Juicy stuff?" I said starting to creep around the two scientists to get a look at the information on the screen.

"The juiciest."

I swung around as I sensed someone coming through the door. "What are you doing Mr. Stark?" the Director asked, barging in.

Tony, again, didn't look up from the panel as he said, "Kind of been wandering the same thing about you."

"You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract," Fury pressed.

"We are. The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit we'll have the location within half a mile," Bruce said boldly.

"You'll get the cube back. No muss no fuss—" the computer beeped and Tony turned back to the screen, "What is Phase Two?"

Fury was becoming uneasy; what ever this Phase Two was, it was bad and obviously Fury didn't want us knowing about it.

Another person entered the room and I turned to see Steve sauntering in with... Oh no. He was holding some kind of futuristic looking gun and I knew exactly what it was about before he even said a word.

"Phase Two is where SHIELD uses the Tesseract to make weapons," Steve said. "Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow for me."

"Rogers," Fury began to explain for the possession of the highly incriminating weaponry, "we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're—"

"I'm sorry, Nick," Tony said sarcastically, turning the computer display to show the rest of the people in the room, "What were you lying?"

Laid out in detail on the screen was a very large, very lethal looking missile.

"I was wrong, Director, the world hasn't changed a bit," Steve said bitterly.

I looked around bewildered at each of my "teammates." My head was already spinning from all the negative energy in the room. "Hey, guys we need to just—" I began to say but was cut off when Thor and Natasha walked in.

I could tell that she instantly sensed something was deeply wrong. Bruce pointed at her and asked accusingly, "Did you know about this?"

"You think you want to remove yourself from this situation?" She was looking at the doctor when she said that but then she glanced at me.

Bruce gave a mirthless chuckle, "I was in Kolkata. I was pretty well removed."

"Loki is manipulating you."

"And you've been doing what exactly?"

"You didn't come here because I batted my eyelashes."

"And I'm not leaving just because you get a little twitchy." Bruce grabbed the screen and viciously pointed at the diagram of the missile. "I would like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to make weapons of mass destruction," Banner looked at Fury wild eyed.

The room became quiet, expectant of Fury's answer. The Director broke the silence. "Because of him," Fury said pointing at Thor.

There was surprise written on Bruce's face and I got the impression that he had seriously thought the missile was meant for him, or rather the Hulk.

Thor looked at Fury in confusion, "Me?"

"Last year Earth had a visitor from another planet that had a grudge match that nearly leveled a small town," Fury began to explain, "Not only did we learn that we were not alone but that we were hopelessly—hilariously outgunned."

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet," Thor boomed.

"But you're not the only people are you, and not the only threat." Fury made a point of glancing at me. I bit my lip viciously, and tasted the metallic tang of blood.

"The world is filling up with people who can't be matched, who can't be controlled," Fury continued.

"Like you controlled the Tesseract?" Steve said.

"It is your work with the Tesseract that drew Loki to it. It is a signal to all the realms that earth is ready for a higher form of war," Thor boomed furiously.

Looking at Thor with mild anxiety, Steve asked, "A higher form?"

"You forced our hand," Fury defended to the Asgardian. "We had to come up with something—"

"A nuclear deterrent, because that always calms things right down," Tony said.

The anger in the room was already suffocating and I knew it was only going to get worse. I took a step back searching for something lean my weight on. When I found the edge of a table, my hand clamped down, and I could swear I heard a groan of metal.

The lab was a swirling sea of red hot anger and I was going to drown in it. It was like before on the bridge; all the emotions were trapped by the walls which made the effect so much worse.

"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark," Fury pressed.

"I'm sure if he still made weapons," Steve began, "Stark would be neck deep—"

"Wait! Wait! Hold on! How is this now about me?"

"I'm sorry," Steve asked, "Isn't everything?"

"I thought humans were more evolved than this," Thor accused, looking to his "teammates."

"Excuse me," Fury demanded of the Asgardian in disbelief. "Did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?"

"Did you always give your champions such mistrust?" Thor stated coldly.

"Are you really that naive?" Natasha asked. "SHIELD monitors threats."

Bruce looked at Agent Romanoff in disbelief, "Captain America is on the potential threat watch list?"

"We all are," Natasha stated, flatly.

Tony smirked at Steve, absolutely amused by this turn of events. Slipping down from his perch, he asked the super soldier, "You're on that list? Are you above or below angry bees?"

"I swear to God, Stark," Steve growled, swiftly loosing patience with Tony, "one more crack…"

"Threatening!" Tony yelled. "I feel threatened!"

"Hey! Shouting at each other and trading insults isn't going to solve anything!" I said finally being dragged into the madness.

"And you know everything about conflict resolution, huh?" Tony said childishly.

"What the fuck do you know about me, Sark? What you read from the little packet isn't half of it," I snarled, ready to deck the billionaire, or do something worse.

"Oh, do enlighten me," he snarked.

"Go to Hell," I spat. My vision turned red like the fiery depths had come to life.

A tingling heat swept over me. I had just enough sense left to be afraid that an episode was eminent.

I closed my eyes trying to count down from ten again.

_Ten._ I tried to imagine I was standing on a mountain peak looking over the world. The angry voices intruded again and the image started to fade.

_Nine._ The sun was starting to come over the horizon.

_Eight_. Their anger was starting to wrap around me and twist my own thoughts, and as a result the sun turned a blood red.

_Seven._ "You speak of control, yet you court chaos!" Thor boomed over the rising voices of the rest of the team.

I clenched my teeth as the god s voice intruded.

_Six_. I tried again at the mountain peak, but it was twisted and skewed. The sky over the mountains was dark and foreboding and the sky to the east was scarlet like blazing flames.

I opened my eyes and a frustrated growl escaped my throat.

"It's this MO, isn't it?" Bruce demanded, wrapping his arms around his body tightly as his anger grew. "I mean, what are we…a team? No, no, no. We're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're..." he thought for a moment, "we're a time-bomb."

Fury froze and stared at Bruce. His gaze shifted to me, seeing that I was barely holding it together as well. Placing a hand on his gun, he said to both of us, "You two need to step away."

Tony wrapped an arm around Steve's shoulders. "Why shouldn't they let off a little steam? Go ahead Raven scream at me some more."

"Shut the fuck up, Tony," I mumbled, still trying to remain control.

Slapping his arm away, Steve recoiled from the billionaire's touch like it was diseased. Angrily, he snapped, "You know damn well why! Back off!"

"Oh, I'm starting to want you to make me."

Steve came face to face with Tony Stark, eyes locked. "Big man in a suit of armor," he scoffed. "Take that off, what are you?"

"Genius. Billionaire. Playboy. Philanthropist," Tony said throwing all his tittles in the captain's face.

"Not to mention eccentric, annoying, and egotistical," I muttered under my breath.

"I know guys with none of that worth ten of you." Steve sneered at him, "Yeah, I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on the wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

"I think I would just cut the wire," Tony countered, all good humor gone from his voice.

"Always a way out..." Steve smirked sardonically. "You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero."

"A hero, like you? You're a science experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle!" Tony spat back at Steve.

It was now really beginning to be too much. I started hugging myself tightly. Barely able to keep hold of myself and keep my plight to myself. Part of me wanted to scream and lash out with my power, affectively destroying the thing that was causing me distress.

_I should run, get as far away from here as I can_, I thought with the last part of my mind that was still lucid, but I couldn't move.

Steve said to Tony, eyes narrowed, "Put the suit on, let's go a few rounds."

From across the lab, Thor's deep voice rumbled in laughter. "You people are so petty… and tiny."

"Yeah," Banner mocked. "This is a team."

"Huh, that's _exactly_ what I've been thinking ever since I got here," I said in agreement.

"Agent Romanoff," Fury commanded, "would you escort Miss Thorn and Dr. Banner back to their—"

"Where?" Bruce interrupted, stepping away from the approaching woman, arms still tightly wound about his chest. "You rented my Room."

"I was wondering if you had one of those things for me. That would be just like SHIELD," I snarled.

Fury glanced at me warningly. He gave an annoyed huff, swiftly losing patience. "The cell was just in case—"

"In case you needed to kill me, but you can't! I know! I've tried!" Bruce shouted.

A heavy silence fell over the lab in seconds. It was like a pause button had been pressed on the rest of the team.

"I got low," Bruce explained, feeling the need to justify himself. "I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out!"

I just blinked. I was shocked, yes, but to me it had been obvious the way he felt about himself that he had considered or was considering suicide. Because of the fact that he was standing before all of us now, however, no one would have guessed that he had actually tried to commit the dark deed.

I could certainly empathize with him, and not just because I'm an empath.

"So I moved on. I focused on helping other people," Bruce continued, "I was good, until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here in danger!"

Completely wrapped up in his anger and frustration, his eyes were firmly set on Natasha. "You want to know my secret, Agent Romanoff?" he ground out, teeth clenched. "You want know how I stay calm?"

His hand slowly reached back behind him and grabbed the spear, as if he wasn't even aware he was doing it.

The lab grew deathly still. No one dared to move.

"Dr. Banner, put the scepter down." Steve said in low tone.

Slowly, Bruce's eyes dropped to his hand, and confusion made itself present on his face.

A thought started to form in my mind. Why had we suddenly been so at each other's throats? The rate in which everything fell apart was insane; as was how far it had gone. I could understand Tony and Steve having a hissy fit and everyone being furious with Fury, but why had Tony suddenly snapped at me just because I was trying to calm things down? The conflict resolution comment had been a low blow, and he knew that.

I concentrated for a moment on the energy signature of the scepter. When I got the feel for it (which it was strangely easy to because it was so like a human mind) I searched each of my "teammate's" minds for the signature. I didn't find it a first, but when I sunk a layer deeper, there it was staring me right in the face.

Interestingly enough, Bruce, Tony, and Steve were "contaminated" the most with the scepter's energy. Apparently, over prolonged periods of time around the scepter, you became more susceptible to its influence. Interesting.

"Bruce," I said feinting calm, "Why did you reach back for the scepter? Did it feel like—I don't know—it was calling to you?

He looked at me surprised. "I-I don't know, I just—"

Suddenly a ping came from Tony's briefcase computer.

The doctor leapt for the distraction and pretended to forget that I had said anything at all.

"Sorry kids," Banner said sarcastically as he placed the spear back down on the table and walked over to the terminal. "You don't get to see my party trick after all."

There was a small pause in the tension before everyone in the lab realized what the ping meant; they knew where the Tesseract was. However, with it found, they now had to figure out how they were going to get it and who was going to keep it. All of a sudden, the anxieties that had plagued the group before Banner's mental break came back with a vengeance.

"You have located the Tesseract?" Thor asked uneasily.

Rushing towards the door to get his suit, Tony called over his shoulder, "I can get there faster."

"Look," Steve said calmly, once again the voice of reason, "all of us should—"

"The Tesseract belongs on Asgard," the demigod demanded. "No human is a match for it."

Tony turned on his heel to leave. He was nearly out the door when Steve yanked him back. "You're not going alone," the super soldier commanded.

"You going to stop me?" Stark pushed back.

Captain America's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Put on the suit. Let's find out."

"I'm not afraid to hit an old man."

"Put on the suit."

"You know," I said loudly, "I think we could get to the Tesseract faster if you two stop dick measuring for one moment an—" I stopped abruptly, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. A second later the room was consumed in fire. I was directly above the blast.

The last thing I heard before the room exploded was, "Oh my God."


	13. Chapter 13: Not-so-Jolly Green Giant

Chapter 13: Not-So-Jolly Green Giant

I only had milliseconds to put up a barrier between me and the blast. One moment there was stable ground beneath my feet, the next I was falling through the floor in my magical fairy princess bubble. I let go of the energy mid-fall and landed somewhat gracefully on the hard metal floor below.

I squinted through the swirling dust to see the faint out lines of two people.

There was a female voice and realized that Natasha was down here. I went over to them. I saw that the agent had her foot stuck under a heavy looking pipe.

"We're all okay," Natasha said into her ear piece, "We are all okay, right?" she then said addressing Bruce and I.

"I'm okay but Bruce is..." I trailed off. I quickly got to my feet and went to Bruce. I lit a Lantern and crouched down a yard away from him not daring to get any closer. "Bruce, you're going to be alright, everything is going to be alright, you just have to fight it," I said determinedly.

"Raven... you have to... get away... quickly!" The Doctor had to stop and pant for breath between every few words. At only a few feet away, I could feel echoes of the torture he was going through; it took everything for him to say that.

"I can't just—"

"GET AWAY _NOW_!" Bruce yelled in a voice that was distorted and monstrous. I blinked in surprise as his face started to turn green. I knew it was a dramatic change, I had seen the videos and I had been there in Harlem when the Hulk had to fight the abomination, but to see Bruce changing before my eyes was, to say the least, disturbing.

"Raven, go, now!" Natasha called out.

"But Bruce—"

"Raven!"

I looked between the two and finally left the doctor's side, rushing to help her. She protested that should just run, but I completely ignored her, and tried to roll off the pipe from her foot. At first it didn't move at all, but eventually, when I was straining with effort, it rolled off enough for Natasha to pull her foot out.

She instantly sprang up and grabbed my arm. "Let go, I can run by myself!" I said. Natasha let go, but we ran only a few feet before she noticed that my Lantern was following us.

"Put that thing out, now," Natasha said fiercely, radiating terror. I made the Lantern blinked out with a muttered apology. She grabbed my arm again, this time, even against my extreme dislike of being touched, I didn't protest because of the deafening roar that came from behind us.

We were barely able to get up the steps to a catwalk before they were ripped out from beneath our feet by a giant green hand. At that moment, I was hit by a wave of the most exquisite rage that came, of course, from the Hulk. There was something else there, though. Before I could figure out what it was Natasha dragged me down the catwalk.

She pushed me over a pipe onto an adjacent catwalk. We took several turns and ran down some stairs and then took several more turns until Natasha slowed down and let go of my arm.

I furiously rubbed it like I was trying to get some unclean substance off of it.

Natasha held up a hand to stop.

I tried to listen for Hulk, but he was incredibly light on his feet for a guy his size. Even hough I couldn't hear him, I quickly found the behemoth's presence with my sixth sense; he was alarmingly close.

"Natasha—" I tried to whisper but she instantly turned around with a thunderous scowl to silence me.

"But—"

"Shhh!"

He was now so close he was practically right on top of us, but that was when Natasha decided to run for it. The Hulk leapt out of the shadows and roared at us. Natasha shot a pipe above his head and the contents sprayed him in the face. For the moment, the green giant was busy with destroying the annoyance.

We ran, but almost immediately the Hulk was gaining on us. I stopped in my tracks and turned, facing the not-so-jolly green giant.

"Stop!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. I knew he wouldn't stop I was just hoping maybe to get him to slow down so he didn't smack into the energy barrier I raised subsequently.

There was a spectacular flash of light and the Hulk bounced off of the energy shield. The big guy was not instantly off put. Once he was over his initial shock he gave a tremendous roar as if to say that he accepted the challenge of breaking through my shield. Well, I guess he roared; the energy field even blocked out sound. He pounded on it making the wall light up brilliantly with every punch.

I sunk down on my knees. My cheeks became wet and realized that I was crying.

I became aware that Natasha was still behind me. I turned to her and saw that she was staring at the Hulk. "What! It is not his fault! He didn't ask for this!" I screamed at the poor bewildered woman who I would feel very sorry for in another situation. "It's not my fault," I whispered at the end. I wrinkled my brows, not even knowing myself what I meant by that.

The Hulk finally stopped pounding on the unbreakable barrier and started to pace, watching me and Natasha both. I noticed that when he looked at Natasha there was recognition, but he curled his lip and bared his teeth. When he looked at me, however, his brows creased with what (no lie) looked like concern and directly after he would look at Natasha again but for a much longer period of time, like he was trying to stare her down.

I couldn't tell what he was really feeling because the shield blocks everything even my own special senses, but I got the crazy feeling that he was being protective of me.

I got up and went to the barrier. Hulk watched the whole time only glancing over to Natasha a time or two.

I went right up to the barrier and put both hands on it. Hulk mimicked my position, and put his face right up to the invisible wall.

"You're going to be calm now right? Okay?" I mumbled mostly to myself because I knew he couldn't hear me. "I want you to trust me and I want to show you that I trust you, too, so I'm going to take down the shield."

"What!" I heard Natasha shriek behind me.

"I don't think he likes you so you should go, _now_," I said not taking my eyes away from the Hulk.

"You can't take the barrier down," she said.

I was about to say something but then froze; I sensed another person coming in fast, faster than humanly possible.

_Thor._

Time for a science lesson kids. What happens when an unmovable object meets an unstoppable force. And say the unmovable object was my unbreakable energy shield and Thor is the unstoppable force. Well, here's what was going to happen: Thor would go splat!

"Get down. Get down!"

I released the energy shield trapping the green giant and formed a new one covering Natasha and I. Even though I now had an unbreachable barrier above me I instinctively covered my head.

There was a tremendous tremor and I'm sure that there was also a very loud crash accompanying it, I just couldn't hear it because of the shield.

I cautiously looked up, and since there was a lack of thunder gods and giant green men, I decided to let the shield down.

I looked over at Natasha. "You okay?" I asked.

She glanced at the large hole in the wall and then to me and nodded. "Yeah, yeah…might need psychotherapy after this…but, yeah."

"Good," I said.

I leapt up and went after the battling Titans, ignoring Natasha's shocked and horrified expression as she watched me leave

I couldn't desert my friend in trouble. Bruce was out of his head (not to mention big, green and rampaging) and I had to help him, in fact it seems that I might be the only one who could on this ship right now.

I relied on the swath of destruction to guid me to the battling pare.

Out of the corner of my eye I say movement. My instincts took over and I bent backward letting the object fly only an inch above my face. In the last moment I realized it was Thor's hammer.

I sprang after the mystical object; I, trying to find it's master just as it was. I found Thor right at the moment when he caught Mjöllnir and swung it into Hulk's face. The Hulk went flying back from the impact into a jet nearly snapping in half.

He was stunned for a moment, then he gave a growl and ripped off a wing of the jet, throwing it at Thor. The Asgardian ducked under it like a deadly version of limbo.

Thor threw his hammer at Hulk, but but he ducked and caught it. However, the Hulk still went flying back. The hammer clanged to the ground and stuck to it like a high powered magnet even with the Hulk straining to pick it up.

I chose this moment to step out of the shadows and confront the green giant. Not very smart, but I didn't think I would get another chance to catch him when he wasn't pounding on Thor.

"Bruce!" I called out. His head whipped up and for a moment there was tender recognition. In that moment, against my batter judgement, I let myself hope that the situation can be reversed.

"Raven, get away!" Thor yelled. At those three words my hope came crashing down around me.

The Hulk turned to Thor upon hearing his voice, completely forgetting about me. He gave a tremendous roar and charged the thunder god who had stayed back knowing if he made a move that I would get caught up in the crossfire. I was already caught the crossfire, though.

As the Hulk let go of the hammer and charged Thor I tried to get out of the way, I really did, but I was just not fast enough. Now completely consumed with destroying Thor, the Hulk didn't see me any more, he just saw something in his way.

A green hand swiped me out of the way, hitting me across the face, probably breaking my nose and giving me a black eye and definitely busting my lip. Most likely the only thing that saved my entire skull from being shattered was a superhuman durability that I somehow possessed.

Also, the force should have broken my neck, and I wished it had, in view of the fact that I would then be dead and not have to deal with the aftermath of getting hit in the face by the Hulk.

I curled into a fetal position, clutching my head and screamed at the top of my lungs. It wasn't because my face felt like it had been hit by a sledge hammer that I screamed in agony (I'm not a wuss like that). No, not at all. I was hit in the face, the only part of me that had skin exposed.

Let me explain a little better what happens when skin to skin contact is made. It _is_ like touching someone's soul, but it's also like seeing their memories but not actually seeing them; it's like feeling there past memories, if that makes any sense whatsoever. I feel their past pain and emotions; all their past sorrow and grief, their past moments of happiness, everything.

I felt the Hulk's rage, while also Bruce's frustration, hopelessness, and hate for himself and his alter ego; all the past sadness, anger, fear (there was so much fear in Bruce's past, it's unbelievable). The two were pretty much separate except for the fear of being taken away and locked up.

I was consumed by the Hulk _and_ Dr. Banner; it was so much worse than ever before because there were two people in my head this time. The tiny part of me that was left was the voice that screamed repeatedly "DON'T LOSE CONTROL, DON'T LOSE CONTROL, DON'T LOSE CONTROL!" as I convulsed on the floor.

I became aware that a heat was spreading through me like it usually does before bad things happened. I was just conscious enough to pull it back.

My restrain started to slip and I might have lost control completely if the chaos in my head hadn't finally started to recede. The easing of the tumult was so utterly welcome that I sobbed with relief.

I gradually realized that someone was frantically calling my name.

"Raven, Raven!" I think it was Thor but I couldn't be sure; his face was awfully blurry at the moment, as was his voice.

I tried to say something intelligible, but it came out more like the sound of a dying animal.

"What is wrong? Are you hurt?"

All I could manage to say was, "Un-uh"

"I'm going to bring you to safety," Thor said. He started to reach to pick me up.

My heart leapt into my throat. "NO!" I screamed, scrambling away from him on my hands and knees.

I tried to stand but swayed violently. I crouched back down and leaned back on my haunches.

"I'm fine, I just need a minute," I said unsteadily. Thor looked at me skeptically, not in the least bit swayed.

"What happened to Bruce?" I said partly with genuine concern and partly to change the subject.

"He has…jumped off the ship, quite literally. Are you sure you are alright?" Thor said changing the subject back and foiling my attempts.

"You should be making sure Loki doesn't get away, rather than worrying about me," I said knowing that would get him off my case.

Sure enough he stood up already impatient to do just that. "You may be right, but you still did not answer my question," he said.

"Yes, alright?" I said answering his inquiry. "I'll meet you there."

Like it was permission for him to leave, Thor sprinted off to find his wayward brother.


	14. Chapter 14: Left to Tender Mercies

Chapter 14: Left to Tender Mercies

I don't know how long I sat there waiting for the room to stop spinning.

After a while I knew that Thor might need my help in dealing with his demented brother and I did say that I would meet him at Loki's cell.

I slowly climbed to my feet. Again, I swayed violently but this time did not let myself go down. Instead I caught myself on the wall.

My head swam violently and suddenly it became too much. I doubled over and out came the half digested chicken tenders, mashed potatoes, and macaroni. I leaned against the wall with my whole body to recover.

_I must look like some drunken idiot_, I thought mordantly.

I recovered enough that I didn't think I would throw up again, so I pushed myself off the wall. I swayed once but regained my balance quickly and went off to find Thor.

I didn't know where they were keeping Loki exactly, but sometimes when it's really important I just know where to go (that's how I found several of my hideouts), and this was one of those times.

I looked on in horror when I reached my destination. There was a dead man in the entrance, the cell was gone, and worse of all, Coulson was propped up against the wall bleeding out.

I slowly walked to him, having the sudden urge to wretch again.

I kneeled down in front of him and pushed the giant gun out of his lap.

He looked weakly up at me. "Sorry you missed all the fun," he said, and I stifled a grimace as a trickle of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth. I swallowed hard, and felt a familiar wetness on my cheeks again.

I looked down at the wound, staring at it for a while. I had never had much interest in medical stuff but had learned a bit about medical terminology and a few other things while I was in The Lab to keep up with the scientists when they had the courtesy to explain what torture they were about to inflict on me and why. From that, I knew a wound like this was absolutely lethal. I could tell his left lung was definitely punctured, but even if it wasn't he would still die because there are so many arteries and blood vessels where he was stabbed that he would bleed out quite quickly.

Despite this I couldn't stop myself form saying, "I-I'll go get help."

I started to get up but Coulson grabbed my sleeve.

"No, just wait. I'm sure…they're on their way," he said feebly.

He and I both knew that was a lie. My vision blurred with unshed tears as I sensed the truth: he didn't want to die alone.

"Coulson, you dirty liar," I said without any humor.

Coulson gave a mirthless chuckle. It was ended by a loud cough, then another, then he was seized violent spasms in a violent coughing fit. Soon he was gasping for air.

I started to panic, not knowing what to do. "Just breathe!" I said feeling very helpless. That was probably the stupidest thing you could say at a time like this but what else could one say?

"Coulson, just try to brea—"

I stopped dead as I felt the tip of a spear press against my back. He must be like a phantom, not a single step issued a sound; there wasn't even a slight swish from his coat as he moved.

"I wish you hadn't come here," Loki said and I almost turned around when I heard what I thought might be sincerity in his voice.

I glanced at Coulson, who was no longer coughing but was a bloody mess. He had blood all down his chin that gave him a gruesome look, but what made him look particularly scary was the look of pure hate he was sending Loki.

"Why do you care?" Coulson asked Loki in a reedy voice.

I winced as the tip of the spear started digging into my flesh. "Maybe not a good time to provoke the man with a spear at my back," I mumbled wryly, mostly to myself. Coulson obviously thought that I had really told him off on account that he looked away sheepishly. I was going to amend that by doing something so much worse. "but I don't really care," I said as an after thought. "So what will it be? Are you going to run me through or screw with my mind like those other poor saps?" I said with wry, macabre, humor.

The fact that I could still make remarks like that at a time like this, means that I must have either a twisted mind or an impaired one because I was at Loki's tender mercy.

I was surprised he didn't just kill me then. My surprise grew when moments stretched and he still did nothing.

Coulson was watching Loki over my shoulder and his eyebrows were steadily climbing as was his level of surprise.

"No," Loki said suddenly.

I was so utterly surprised I reeled back, making the spear dig even deeper into my back, however, I hardly noticed.

"_What?"_ I said dumbly.

I wanted to say more, like: "_the hell_," or maybe not something stupid, like: "_why_," and then of course adding, "_the hell_," but I couldn't manage that in my stupefied state.

"Never mind that now, just sleep," Loki said. Suddenly the spear tip withdrew from my back.

I was about to ask what he meant by that, when something hit me forcefully in the head. I say that humorously seeing as forceful is an understatement. It was about twice as hard as the Hulk had hit me, yet some how I stayed blearily awake for a few moments longer.

I saw Coulson's shocked expression as I slumped to the floor. I blacked out just for a second before just barely coming to for a few more moments. I weakly turned over on my back to see that Loki was still standing over me with a deliberately expressionless face.

My vision started to fade and it seemed like I was looking through a keyhole. Finally I gave up and surrendered my tenuous grasp on consciousness. The darkness consumed me and I fell into sweet oblivion.


	15. Chapter 15: Visions

Chapter 15: Visions

_I stood looking up at a tall, very modern skyscraper. It was extremely familiar, like I should place it without even having to think. There was also a name on it but for some reason I couldn't read it. It was out of focus and blurry like a bad photograph. Just like all other times._

_A beam of light shot up from the building and suddenly there was literally a hole in the sky. The menacing void hung over the building_

_Soon, gray monsters began to pour out of the whole like rain. Some were flying around; others were foot soldiers, dropping down to terrorize civilians._

_Something clicked in my mind at that point; the hole in the sky was a portal into space, and the gray skinned monsters were the Chitauri. And that building that was so damn familiar finally came fully into focus._

* * *

I didn't wake up all at once as you might think. It turned out to be a slow process. The first thing I became aware of was the faint beeping which was scarily familiar. Then it was the antiseptic smell. It was this benign smell that caused me to nearly panic and in turn caused me to wake fully.

I opened my eyes to a white ceiling. I bolted upright, my breath starting to come in short gasps. I saw that I was indeed in a hospital bed. To make sure that I wasn't restrained I pulled my hands up to my face. When I saw that the were free and still covered in my black leather gloves, I breathed a sigh of relief. I looked down at myself and saw that I was still clad in my dirty black cargo pants and black hoodie. I breathed an even bigger sigh of relief; I was definitely not back at The Lab.

I looked around and saw that I was in a room with several other occupants that were either seriously injured or unconscious.

I tried to take a deep breath to further calm my nerves. The hospital vibe was getting to me. I attempted to ignore it by closing my eyes and getting into the classic rock playing on a radio someone had put on the bedside table.

A certain song came on the radio. I listened to it intently; something about it was important. Tony: that was the connection; he had played it in Stuttgart. Something niggled at the back of my mind. There was something important that involved Stark, but I couldn't quite remember.

Emboldened with new found purpose, I jumped out of the hospital bed, ripping off all the leads in the process. I quickly walked out of the room as alarms went off.

I needed to find Tony. Maybe then I would remember what was so important.

* * *

I was going back to the place where they kept Loki. I don't know why, but something just told me to go there instead of, for example, the bridge.

I passed several agents that were battered and bruised and didn't even look up at me; didn't even care.

When I came to the room I saw Tony leaning on the railing.

"Good, you're here," I said walking up to him.

"It's good to see that you're up Sleeping Beauty," the billionaire said. He tried to sound sarcastic and wry like he usually does, for my sake (as if I didn't know everything has gone to hell).

"I think I have something important to tell you."

"You think? How hard did that SoB hit you over the head?"

I winced and lifted a hand to touch the bandages. "Really hard. Anyway talk to me; bring me up to date. It might help me remember what I was supposed to tell you."

Tony turned back to look across the chasm where Loki's cell used to be. "Well, Coulson died, and Loki got away. Plus, Banner jumped ship, literally," he said not letting any emotion into his voice.

I sighed and nodded solemnly, "I expected that."

"What the hell happened? With you and _him_ I mean," he asked, morbidly curious.

There was a lengthy pause before I answered, "I really don't know. I don't know why he didn't just kill me," I paused and then tried to say with some semblance of humor, "He gave me a huge knot on my head though."

There was another long pause and I suddenly remembered why I had come here. Time was of the essence and I was wasting it (must be the concussion). I nearly slapped myself for it. "Oh my—URGH! I know where the Tesseract is!"

Tony backed up as if _he_ had been slapped. "What!?"

"It's going to be used on top of Stark Tower, _your_ tower!" I said in a very loud voice, almost jumping with rabid excitement.

Tony stared dumbly for a moment then he yelled, "Of course!" He started to walk out, already rambling. "Loki is a full tilt diva. He wants to beat us; he wants to be seen doing it. What better place to do all that than on top of a large building in the middle of a gigantic city, and not to mention it's _my_ tower, _and_ that it's powered by a self sustaining energy source."

* * *

As everyone else was getting ready, I was holed up in a dark corner somewhere. I stared and stared and stared at the picture on the holoscreen, but there was nothing new. Just the same old niggle at the back of my mind.

"Why didn't you kill me you bastard?" I whispered at the picture which of course remained stationary, offering up no answers.

I sighed and turned the device off. I closed my eyes, running a hand through my hair.

Maybe I wasn't going back far enough in my memories. Something changed and there was a flash of a memory for a second of him smiling. Not smirking or grinning maniacally, just smiling…at me. I tried to go back to when that tiny fragment of a moment happened, but— No! There where too many painful, horrible memories in the way. I couldn't get past those memories. They were like a wall; a wall that I wasn't quite ready to break yet.

I sighed again and stood up from my crouched position, leaving my hiding spot.


	16. Chapter 16: The Sky is Falling

Chapter 16: The Sky is Falling

I was nearly vibrating with nervous energy. We were flying toward certain or nearly certain death. But whatever.

At one point everyone had asked how I knew where the Tesseract would be and I had told them all the same thing: that I had seen it in a dream. When they all looked at me funny, I said, "I can't believe you people still get surprised about stuff!"

I told them nothing else about the dream, though. I hated that I was letting my teammates go into battle blind, but the moral was already low. Telling them that we were going to fight a battle that we couldn't possibly win would do no one any good. Well, except maybe it would keep them alive.

I stared out the window at the fast approaching Manhattan skyline. My stomach sinking with every second the land got closer to us. Everyone else was reasonably anxious, but none were nearly bursting at the seams with it like me.

_Because they don't know what they're getting into. They're lambs to the slaughter, just lambs to the slaughter,_ that little voice nagged scathingly nearly driving me insane (if I wasn't already there). I wanted to scream for it to shut up, but then I knew everyone would think I'm schizophrenic or something, including myself.

I was suddenly gripped by a flashback. The bodies of SHIELD agents piled up, and they just kept coming because they had no idea what they were getting into either.

_STOP IT!_ I screamed in my mind.

I put my head in my hands. I had to calm down. I was nearing a mental break and having an episode in a tin can thousands of feet up in the air would be worse than what I was having a panic attack about.

The cabin simultaneously became a melting pot of both wonder and fear. I didn't bother to look up; I already knew what had stirred up the three people: the portal was open.

"Stark, we're coming in one hundred and fifty degrees northeast," Natasha said

"Did you guys stop for drive through?" Tony asked sarcastically over the speakers.

"Might as well have," I grumbled to myself.

I startled when aliens streamed past the jet and Natasha began shooting at them.

I stood up and looked ahead out of the windshield, and gulped when I saw Thor fighting Loki on the balcony of Stark Tower. The quinjet pulled right up next to them.

"Natasha," Agent Barton yelled over the roar of the engines.

"I got it," she said and lit up the balcony. Loki was able to get away from Thor for a moment and turned to raise the spear. A large blast of energy shot out from the tip of it and hit one of the quinjet's wings.

The entire jet shook. I was thrown to the floor and Steve clung for dear life to the hand holds on the ceiling. He kicked me in the head once and I let out a grunt of pain.

"Sorry!" he thought to yell over the deafening cacophony of screeching metal.

After that I formed a shield as to not have the painful accident happen again.

The jet finally crashed, ripping up the asphalt in its wake. I lowered my shield and started to get up when Steve held out a hand for me. I simply ignored it and got up by myself.

We ran out onto the street amidst all the chaos. The four of us looked up at the portal, watching in horror as the huge head of a gigantic monster poked out, and the rest quickly followed suit. The giant flying eel-like creature slithered past us, as it did, Chitauri foot soldiers jumped out of a compartment underneath the beast.

As the Chitauri and the space whale got close I felt a sadistic delight in destruction from the Chitauri soldiers.

A red hot lump of anger and hate for the Chitauri welled in my chest. My hands curled at my sides, and I felt the natural heat spread through me. The energy was just waiting to be released, and this time I would happily let it go, when it was aimed at a Chitauri monster.

**000**

Natasha, Barton and I, ducked behind a wrecked cab, while Steve went to scout out the damage. He came back a little while later.

"We've got civilians trapped down—" Steve was cut of from giving his report by a brigade of aliens on their air scooters sweeping through the streets shooting at civilians.

"They're like fish in a barrel down there," Steve said in a quiet, horrified voice.

A several Chitauri dropped down to pester us. Natasha and Barton shot at them killing a good few.

"We got this go," Natasha said to Steve as she saw him look lamentingly at the street below.

"Do you think you can hold them off?" Steve said.

Barton turned to him. "Captain it would be my genuine pleasure."

As Steve was getting ready to jump of the bridge I stopped him. "What about me? I can keep up," I protested. I would much rather save civilians than kill things—even it was evil sadistic alien invaders.

"No you can't. Stay with them," he said indicating the pair of assassins. With that he jumped off the bridge onto a crashed buss and ran off.

I looked back at the two assassins who were still fighting a couple of Chitauri.

"Back up!" I yelled at them.

They turned to look at me. When they realized what I was about to do, they got out of the way as fast as they could.

I didn't mess around this time. I didn't use a plasma ball or any other complicated thing; I just set my sights on the aliens and let the energy loose. I hated to admit it, but it felt good to let go of control.

The energy came out as blue-white flames. When it touched the Chitauri it turned yellow. In no time at all, the aliens were burned to a crisp, and their dried husks fell to the ground, still smoldering.

I drew the energy back in and faced to two assassins.

They stared at me, both with raised eyebrows. I'm happy to say that at least there mouths weren't agape.

I ignored the shock felt coming from them, and crossed my arms a bit defensively over my chest. "What? They were getting on my nerves."

They shrugged in unison.

"Neat trick," Barton said and shot an alien trying to sneak up behind him.

**000**

The Captain showed back up.

"Hey Cap, you should have seen the light show Raven put on. Those are her kills over there," Natasha said pointing to several desiccated alien bodies.

Steve finished killing a Chitauri and glanced at the my handiwork. "Wow, you did that? How?" he asked somewhat disturbed.

"Well I—" I began to say when a Chitauri fire his (or her? I'm not sure what the hell these things are) gun at me. I lifted a shield momentarily. As soon as the Chitauri paused in firing, I dropped the shield and let loose on the alien like I had done with the others.

"Oh," the Captain mumbled.

With a flash of lightning that killed several Chitauri, Thor landed next to us.

Steve turned his attention to the Thunderer. "What's the story up stairs?" Steve asked.

"The Tesseract has formed a barrier. It is unbreachable," Thor answered dismayed.

"Thor's right. We gotta deal with these guys," Tony said via earpiece.

Natasha looked worriedly to the captain. "How do we do this?" she asked.

"As a team," Steve replied. I may be an empath, but it was hard for me to share his confidence.

Thor turned to the Captain and said, "I have unfinished business with Loki."

"Yeah, well, get in line," said a disgruntled Hawkeye arranging his arrows.

"Save it," Steve said shooting him down. "Loki's going to keep this fight focused on us and that's what we need. Without him these things could run wild. We got Stark up top, he's gonna need us to—"

He was cut off by the sound of a motorcycle approaching. On it was none other than Dr. Bruce Banner.

A goofy grin spread over my face. "So glad you could join us doctor," I said being the first to greet him.

"I'm sorry I can't say the same," he mumbled, then turned to address the team, "So this all seems horrible."

"I've seen worse," Natasha said, eyeing him.

"Sorry." The doctor said a bit sheepishly.

"No, we could use a little worse."

Steve lifted a finger to his earpiece and said into the device, "Stark we got him."

"Great. Tell him to suit up. I'm bringing the party to you."

At that, Tony rounded a building with a giant worm is gaining on his tail.

I instinctively took a step back. _I don't see how that's a party_, I thought. Natasha seemed to read my mind and voiced my exact thoughts.

"Dr Banner, right now might be a really good time for you to get angry," the captain said, a tiny bit of anxiety leaking into his voice.

The doctor leisurely walked towards the beast that was headed straight for him, and said, "That's my secret Captain: I'm always angry."

He began to change; muscles started to bugle and his skin took on a green hue. He was now about ten feet tall and able to punch the space whale in the face that could have seconds before, gobbled him whole.

The giant worm flipped and was now coming down on the rest of us. I formed a shield over the team and Tony helped by shooting a missile at the tail, blowing it into chunks. I released the shield when all the carnage stopped raining down.

In response to the defeat of the space whale, the Chitauri shrieked challengingly, and in response to the Chitauri's challenge, the Hulk gave a deafening roar.

From the hole in the sky, came two more whales and hundreds more Chitauri flew out.

"Captain, make your call," Tony said landing.

**000**

I didn't have time to put up a shield. I did a summer-salt barely missing the blast of a laser. I sent out an explosive blast of energy, catching the Chitauri on fire and sending them flying backward at the same time.

As fun as it was destroying Chitauri over and over again, it was really beginning to take its tole on me. Tremors racked my body, and an ache deep down in my bones was taking hold.

I shook it off and got to my feet, looking around. My area was momentarily clear. I looked over at Natasha to see hat she was struggling with a Chitauri that had her pined to the hood of a car. I made a small plasma ball and shot it at the alien's head. it's head exploded and it slumped forward. The assassin shoved the limp body off of her.

"Thanks, but I could have handled it," she said walking to me.

"Yeah it looked like it," I said trying to keep up the mask of strength. I looked around and sighed. "We've killed so many but they just keep coming."

"You seem to be keeping up," she said encouragingly.

"I'm going to be perfectly honest with you: I don't think I can hold out much longer," I said letting my shoulders slump for a moment.

Natasha sighed. "None of us can. No matter what we do down here, it isn't going to mean a damn thing with them pouring through."

"Way to keep the moral up," Steve said coming over to us.

"You know it's true," I said wearily.

Natasha looked up at the top of Stark Tower that was just visible over the other skyscrapers. "Someone needs to get up there." They both looked at me.

"What are you guys looking at me for?" I said, my voice a couple octaves higher than usual.

"You control energy don't you?" Steve asked.

"Well yeah, but…I'm not sure I could do much," I said.

"Why?"

I sighed. "It's hard to explain."

"You could still go up there and see what you could do couldn't you?" Steve asked.

I chewed my lip. "I guess but—" I was rudely interrupted when a Chitauri blast nearly hit me in the head. The Captain lifted his shield and began advancing on them.

"Hold on a sec Cap'. I got this," I said stepping forward.

As I had done many times before, I sent out a huge wave of energy, eliminating all the Chitauri.

My vision turned dark for a moment and I was barely able to catch myself when I stumbled. Once the moment of weakness was past I turned back to my two teammates.

"Are you okay?" Steve asked, worry written on his face.

"I'm fine," I said tersely.

"Are you sure it's a good idea to send her up there Cap'? She looks pretty beat," Natasha said anxiously.

That does it! I was done with being treated like a child! "Hey! I'm not some little kid! I can take care of myself!" I said indignantly.

"All right but I'm coming with you," Natasha said.

"Damn it! It's like you people aren't even listening to me!" I shouted throwing my hands up in the air.

"Raven, you're running on fumes; we can all see it," Natasha said evenly, taking a few steps toward me.

I let out an angry huff. "Fine," I growled.

"You're going to need a ride," Steve said.

"I think I can help with that. Get back," I said, and they did so quickly.

A group of chariots started to head our way. I looked at the flying chariots and focused on one in particular. As it passed over me I let out a blast of energy. It flipped end over end spiraling down ward. Just before the chariot hit the ground, I formed a bubble around it, suspending it on strings of energy inside of the bubble.

My knees gave out from under me. Breath came in weak gasps, and I trembled from head to toe. My eyes were planted on the ground just under me, but somehow it seemed to spin without me. I faintly heard someone yelling something, but I couldn't quite tell what it was over the ringing in my ears. As the ringing quieted down, I realized it was Natasha.

"Raven, are you okay!?" she asked worriedly, closer that she had been before.

I looked up from the ground and saw that she was right next to me. "Yeah, I'm fine," I said in a voice that in no way sounded "fine." I began pulling myself up with some difficulty.

"Are you still up for this?" she asked.

I looked around and saw that the chariot (with its occupants still on it) still suspended in the bubble. "Yeah, but I think you're going to have to drive."

"All right, I think I can figure it out."

As we walked up to the stationary chariot, a beam of laser flew between us, and we dove in opposite directions.

"Don't worry I got it this time. Go!" Steve shouted at he took on an alien, wrestling its gun away from it, and subsequently shooting it and its friends.

"It's going to take off as soon as I let it go! Get ready!" I shouted at the assassin.

I let go of the energy encompassing the chariot. It swirled for a moment then dissolved. The chariot lurched forward, and in a split second Natasha and I raced for it. We both made it on in just the nick of time.

In a flash, Natasha took out the two aliens riding with us, and they fell shrieking to the ground. She jumped on the back of the alien controlling the chariot and stuck two of her knifes in it, one in each shoulder.

As Natasha tried to turn the vehicle, it swerved violently and we nearly crashed into a building. I was thrown sideways and just barely caught the side of the chariot in time to keep myself from falling to the pavement.

"Are you all right?" she shouted back.

"Yeah sure. Um… hey, just a suggestion, but could you try not doing that again?" I said as I struggled to pull myself back over the side of chariot.

I gasped as a space whale crossed our path. "Hang on!" Natasha managed to yell before she made the chariot shoot up. I was thrown back over the side, landing hard.

"This was a fan-fucking-tastic idea," I wheezed, staying down in my recumbent position.

When the tower was just in front of us and we were coming up on it fast several laser beams flew past us. I pulled myself up quickly into a crouch. I made a feral growl when I saw who was attacking us.

"What's going on?" Natasha shouted back to me.

"It's Loki!" I snarled.

He shot at us several more times, missing us by a mile. Natasha swerved around another building to try to get him off out tail to no avail; he kept driving us away from the tower.

"Why isn't he shooting directly at us?" I wondered out loud.

"What do you mean?" Natasha asked back.

"I mean he's missing us by a mile. I'd think a _god_ would have better aim than that!"

"That's all nice and well, but he is still shooting at us! Do you have anything left in your bag of tricks?" she asked.

"Umm…let me see…" I formed a small plasma ball and shot it at him. He sent a laser blast at it hitting it dead on the first time.

"You see! That he hits: a tiny target but he can't hit us?!" I shout.

"I'm trying to drive, so no I didn't see," Natasha dryly.

We were soon approaching the building Barton was perched on. "Clint, a little help," Natasha said into her earpiece.

I saw the distant figure pull back the draw string. As we passed the archer, he loosed an arrow aimed right at Loki's stupid alien face. Faster that my mind could register, Loki's hand flashed out and caught the arrow.

"Oh, that's just not fair," I said. The next moment the arrow was exploding in his face and I happily was eating my words.

We circled back around, coming back up on the tower. "I don't think I can safely land this thing," Natasha informed, "Can you jump?"

I snorted, "I've had to jump out of approximately fifty-six moving vehicles in just nine years; I think I can do this."

Natasha shrugged and jumped off at that moment doing a back flip in the air. My technique was much less flamboyant, as in I simply jumped.

In the last minute I decided it was unnecessary to put up a shield (it might have cause a mess of the roof, and I didn't want to hear Tony gripe about it). I tucked in a shoulder and rolled. I got up disgruntled and covered in pebble dust, but little worse for wear. I went to stand beside Natasha.

While mainly focused on the glowing cub running the device that was powering the whole in the sky, I didn't even notice that there was someone else up here with us. I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone quietly uttered "The scepter," behind me. Once I was got over my near heart attack, I turned around to see Dr. Selvig lying on the ground.

"Loki's scepter. The energy. The Tesseract can't fight, you can't protect against yourself," he continued to rambled.

"It's not your fault. You didn't know what you were doing," Natasha said trying to calm down the doctor.

The doctor paused and looked thoughtful. "Actually I think I did. I built a safe key to cut the power source. Maybe it will close the portal," Selvig looked over the edge of the roof, "and I think I'm looking at it."

To that I sighed a small breath of relief. No one knew that I couldn't really control energy; it was more like I made it. I don't know where I pulled it from—perhaps a reserve inside of me or maybe from another dimension—I don't know and it doesn't really matter to me. The main thing is, the most I could have done was blast the device, but seeing that I was in such a sorry state, I don't think I could have even done that. Not that it would have helped.

Natasha and I leaned over to see the thing that had formerly been used as a bringer of war and now would be a bringer of peace.

**000**

"Run it in ground," Dr. Selvig said from his computer setup.

Natasha held the scepter in a white knuckled grip as she ran the tip into the force field. She looked at Raven who had collapsed on to the ground saying to them when Natasha and Selvig had looked at her inquisitively, "What? Did I grow a second head or something?"

Before this Natasha had only read about Raven from her files, and she had been wary of Raven herself. Now that she had met the girl, she had a strange kind of respect for her, and not that Natasha would ever admit it, but she felt for the her. She probably understood better than anyone what Raven had went through at "The Lab".

Natasha shook off those thoughts and refocused herself. She said into her earpiece to everyone, "I can close the portal. Does anyone copy?"

"Do it!" Rogers replied instantly.

"No wait," Stark said.

"Stark they're still coming through."

"We've got a nuke coming in, an I know just where to put it."

There was a shocked pause on the line before Cap finally said, "You know that's a one way trip."

There was no reply.

"What's going on?" said a very tired looking Raven that must have forced herself to stand when she sensed trouble.

"Didn't you hear?" Natasha asked.

Raven shook her head. "I kinda fried my earpiece by accident a while back," she said a bit sheepishly.

"There's a nuke coming in. Stark's going to try to put it through the portal."

A horrified look contorted Raven's face. "Tell him to stop, tell him I might be able to…I don't know, put a shield around it," Raven said frantically.

At that moment Tony flew up the side of the building, missile in arms.

After a couple minutes all the Chitauri and space whales fell dead, possibly electrocuted by their own devices after the mother ship had been destroyed.

There was a nerve-racking moment when everyone waited and hoped that Tony would come back through.

"Come on Stark," Natasha whispered tensely.

"Close it," Rogers commanded solemnly over the com. Without a second thought, Natasha obeyed. The pillar of light dissolved, and the portal started to recede.

A small figure came through at the last moment. A small smile began to spread over the hardened assassin's face, but what was relief quickly turned into fear. "He's not slowing down," she whispered in horror.

The billionaire abruptly stopped and hung in mid air. Natasha turned to Raven whose face was contorted in agony and her hands were clinched at her sides. A dribble of blood streamed from her nose.

Natasha's eyes widened. "Raven stop, you're hurting yourself!"

Suddenly the strain vanished from her face and her eyes rolled back in her head.

Natasha dropped the spear, it being no longer important, and ran to Raven as she hit the ground. She reached to pull Raven on to her lap but suddenly the girl's eyes sprang open and she quickly scooted away from the assassin.

"Are you okay?" Natasha asked, admittedly feeling a bit motherly toward the child that wasn't really a child at all.

"I'm fine," Raven said with a wistful look on her face.

"I didn't know you could do that," the agent said referring to the display of telekinesis.

"Neither did I," she said looking at Natasha with a confused and thoughtful expression.

Raven then took on a look of horror. "Is Tony okay?" she said not even waiting for an answer before she got up and ran to the ledge.

"Oh, shit," Natasha mumbled under her breath, soon fallowing Raven.

The billionaire wasn't moving but it was obvious that someone had caught him because other wise he would probably be a heap of metal scrap and…well, you get the idea.

Suddenly, the Hulk let out a roar, and even from the top of the tower they could see Tony jerk violently awake. Natasha let out a sigh of relief before she could stop herself.

"Don't ever tell Stark I was worried for him; I'll never hear the end of it," Natasha said to Raven. The assassin turned to the girl to see that she was now wearing a cheerful grin, but Natasha noticed there was still a haunted look in her eyes.


	17. Chapter 17: Bombshell Secret

Chapter 17: Bombshell Secret

The image was burned into the back of my eyes.

I don't know why I had seen _that_ at _that_ moment. It was completely, totally random.

Considering the circumstances, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that something completely random popped up. I'm just surprised by what did "pop up".

When I had blacked out after discovering (in very bad circumstances) that I had telekinetic powers along with everything else, I saw Loki like he had been in that tiny flash of memory. There was more to it this time, however. The smile that he had wore seemed almost rueful.

_"__I have done nothing but wrong by you," he whispered sadly, "and I am tired of hiding you. The time is not yet right, but the next time you see, me I will be taking you home, so we can be a proper little family." _

_The view changed and I was facing a mirror. In it's reflection I saw that Loki was holding a toddler that looked to be about two years old. I realized with a start that the toddler was me._

_"__Look at us. We're quite the pair, don't you think?" Loki asked the reflection._

_As if the toddler actually knew what he was saying, it cooed happily and smiled back at the reflection._

No matter how many times I tried to discard the image, it kept coming up throughout the debriefing.

I was so distracted I didn't hear the first couple of times Fury called on me.

"Raven! Did you—"

"I want to talk to Loki," I blurted out surprising everyone, especially myself. As soon as it was out I wanted to take it back but there was no way to make the people in the room un-hear what I said.

Fury glared at me for interrupting him. "Why?"

I stared at him for a couple seconds, then nervously folded my gloved hands in front of me on the table. It only took me a second to find an excuse. "I think Loki was working for someone and I want to know who. I mean they could be worse than Loki; it was their army wasn't it?" It was partially true, though that wasn't what I was worried about right now. I really didn't want to tell Fury the true reason why I wanted to talk to the deranged alien.

"Maybe you're right, but it's two risky to put you in there," Fury said making his decree.

"Why? Because you think I'm unqualified or because you just don't want me to?" I protested.

"Both," Fury said simply.

I huffed, "Come on Fury, we need to know this and I'm the most qualified because I know what buttons to push to get the most reaction and I can also sense where I stand with someone," I said reminding everyone of my freakishness. "Anyway, we've defeated him, he has no where to go, and he has no more tricks up his sleeve. I am ninety-nine percent sure that he isn't going to try anything."

"I disagree, Lady Raven. Loki will most likely do anything to escape the consequences of his actions," Thor said.

"I think she's right, Steve said, We didn't listen to her about Loki last time and he ended up getting away," he said referring to our first meeting.

"Okay you know what, lets take a vote, this is a democracy right?" Tony said piping up, "Whoever wants to let her talk to the bastard raise your hand."

Thor, I noticed, did not protest this time to the besmirching of his brother's name.

Tony and Steve were the first to raise their hands; it was kind of ironic because they had never agreed on anything before. Then it was Bruce, Natasha and Barton who hadn't said anything the whole time (I suspect the reason that Bruce hadn't said anything before was because he was seriously struggling to stay awake. I feel for him; I could just pass out myself). Then finally Thor reluctantly raised his hand.

Fury looked around the room and saw that he was beat, "Fine," I almost gave into giving him a smug grin, "but you have to be accompanied by another member of the team." I hid my disappointment behind the afore mentioned smug grin even though now it was mostly fake.

"Okay, Pikachu, I chose you," I said pointing at Thor.

Tony gave a bark of laughter, Barton snickered and even Natasha had to stifle a smile that threatened to creep onto her face. Unfortunately, though, my joke went unappreciated by half of the people in the room. Steve and Thor obviously didn't get the reference and Fury was just…Fury.

**000**

"I think this will go faster if you stay outside," I said to Thor as we walked down the hall towards Loki's cell, which wasn't as high tech as the last one but would do especially now that he just seemed to be…subdued.

Thor furrowed his brow, "Why?"

"How to describe it in words," I mused out loud, "He's not going to say hardly anything if you're present because, well, that's not how he works. I'm hoping to get him to let his guard down with just me being there; maybe he'll see me as easier pray and slip up… And anyway you aren't very good at ignoring insults."

"Then why did you choose me to accompany you?" Thor asked a bit dejected.

"Because no one would have been a good choice, I should have come alone, and for some odd reason, I trust you the most besides Bruce, but this isn't his thing for obvious reasons."

We came to the door and Thor posted guard outside, although with reluctance, and I went inside.

Loki was trapped, like before, behind glass. This time though, behind a wall of glass that cut the room in half.

He had sat on his bed ever since we brought him in. He would probably have you believe that he was just being a Mr. Grumpy Pants but really he was probably still in a lot of pain from the thrashing the Hulk gave him.

I glanced at the camera nervously. I could possibly fry them if I sent a blast of energy in their direction. I _wanted _stop the people I was starting to care for from watching the secret of the week unfold. It would reveal to them that I really am a monster, or at least the spawn of a monster. I knew it would get out eventually, though. If they shun me for it, it would be nothing new. In fact things would return to normal; I would be alone again.

Maybe, though I could postpone asking the question just a little while longer.

I started to pace, the motion calming me a little. I didn't care if I looked like I was making a fool out of myself, I just needed to pull through this.

"First they sent that pathetic red haired trollop and now they send a nervous child," Loki mused out loud.

"Actually I requested to talk to you," I said stopping my movement all at once.

"Talk to me? Why ever would you want to talk to me, the would be conqueror of your world?" Loki said with undisguised bitterness in his voice.

I looked down at my feet, scuffing one nervously against the floor. "But besides that, what are you?" I said still looking down at the floor for a moment before looking up, and being met by a completely blank face.

"I am many things my dear; you will have to be more specific," Loki said impassively.

My feet were moving before I could stop them, and I was pacing again.

"I mean to me. What are you you to me? Or what am I to you? You couldn't kill me when you had just killed…someone else, instead you just incapacitated me—but you could have just killed me!" Now I was rambling and just a bit of hysteria started to creep into my voice. "It would have served your purpose: to have one less enemy and to beat the team down, make them feel like the battle is already lost, but oh no, you couldn't do it…" I trailed off realizing now that I had started to ramble.

The lights flickered and in the back of my mind I registered that I should calm the heck down. I stopped pacing and drew in a shuddering breath.

All throughout my anxious rambling, Loki had stayed perfectly quiet and had a perfect deadpan expression, but now he let out a mirthless chuckle.

"You came to ask a single question, didn't you? But why ask when it seems you already know the answer?" he said with a thread of bitterness on his voice.

I sucked in a lungful and said in an amazingly calm voice, "I have to know without a doubt."

"Your friends are watching though, are they not? Shouldn't you be afraid that they will consider you a monster?" There was a drop of venom in his voice, but I suspected that it wasn't directed toward me.

I shrugged and smiled wryly. "I am afraid, but it would be nothing new; everyone else here thinks I'm a monster." _Even me_, I added in my head. "But that doesn't matter. I'm tired of secrets."

Loki nodded thoughtfully.

**000**

"What the hell is she doing?" Natasha mumbled to herself.

She glanced up from the screen to the rest of the people in the room. There was Steve who sat across the table from her with a confused expression, and Bruce who wore a deeply concerned expression. Then Tony, most surprisingly, was completely quiet, wearing a shocked, knowing look.

Natasha wished right now that she knew what was going on in that big brain of his because apparently he knew a lot more than she did.

She looked back at the screen where Loki was still considering Raven's words.

Suddenly the demigod spoke, "Then ask your question."

Uncertainty flashed on Raven's young face for a moment, Natasha noticed, but was gone almost instantly. There was no nod of acknowledgment or a gulp of breath to steady her nerves. Raven just came out with it: "Are you my father?"

The table was dead silent.

Natasha just caught what sounded like a whispered "yes" from Loki.

She turned to Fury who was talking into his com. and realized what he was doing.

"Sir, you don't need to call in a team." Meaning he was calling in a team of agents with tranq darts to neutralize her and put her in the cage SHIELD had prepare for her in an eventuality.

Fury turned to glare at the Widow. "You do not have the authority to say otherwise."

**000**

I left the moment he said 'yes' , not trusting myself to not do something I might regret.

I met an expectant Thor still standing dutifully by the door.

"Did you gather any new information?" he asked.

I looked down and idly scratched at my arm, reluctant to talk about it.

"Well?" he said insistently.

"Look, just go ask the rest of the Avengers if you want to know," I thought for a second and added, "and tell Tony I'm sorry that I'm probably going to miss getting shawarma with you guys later."

"I do not understand, has Loki done something to upset you?" Thor asked, now concerned.

I scratched at my arm again, realizing there was a strange pricking sensation causing me to scratch idly at it.

"No, kind of but not really. I guess it s not exclusively his fault," I said still scratching at the irritation on my arm.

I stopped suddenly when I sensed several people coming towards us in the adjacent hallway. Five people in black came down one end of the hall me and Thor were in and after a few minutes another five came down the other end. They were all carrying guns.

Thor looked around confused and somewhat outraged. "What is the meaning of this?" he boomed.

The irritation on my arm was now a stinging pinching sensation. It suddenly made me wonder if I was bitten or stung by an insect, and was almost as disconcerting as the situation at hand.

"They came here to take me away," I said surprising myself with the calmness in my voice.

"What?" Thor said turning to me sharply.

I unconsciously rubbed at my afflicted arm before saying more. "I revealed something that would make me even more despised by SHIELD. So, yeah, it turns out I'm…related to a certain villain that's on board the ship at this moment."

There was a small moment of confusion then his eyes widened slightly in surprise. I was the one surprised when he started to put himself, to the best of his ability, between me and the SHIELD agents.

"What is your relation?" he asked still shaking off a little shock. He was looking at me intently now, his eyes boring into me.

I sighed but held his gaze. "He's my dad."

"But how can that be?" Thor asked bewildered.

I shrugged, unusually calm despite the fact that there were SHIELD agents pointing guns at me this very moment.

I reached up to rub the irritated spot on my arm and found, this time, that there was an object sticking out of my arm. I pulled it out and looked at it almost apathetically: it was a tranq dart.

"Ah, I suppose that explains it. Interesting," I mumbled just before collapsing.

There might have been a shouted protest from Thor, but it was already so garbled I couldn't tell. I wasn't even sure if someone had stopped me from falling. The only thing I was sure of was just the unending darkness that stretched forever in all directions.


	18. Chapter 18: The Caged Bird Sings

Chapter 18: The Caged Bird Sings

I woke in a dimly lit room with four black walls. My tongue was heavy and felt like sand paper. I turned it around this way and that in a futile attempt to bring a minuscule amount of moisture back into my mouth.

I scanned for anyone around and I found to my surprise that I couldn't sense anything outside.

Despite my current situation, I chuckled (maybe because I was still feeling those drugs they had used on me).

"Let me guess this cell was specifically designed for me. How…predictable," I said in a scratchy, dry voice as I pulled myself to my feet with the aid of the wall.

I suddenly remembered a Doctor Who episode I had seen one night when I stayed at a ratty rundown little motel in Texas. "What next? Is it made out of zero balance dwarf star alloy?" I giggled as I imagined a collective "huh" from the people sitting around watching the feed coming in from my cell.

I waited for a long time for some kind of reply but got none. I sighed and sat back down preparing myself for the long haul.

I didn't think I would sit in here for _too_ long because one: Thor would be blistering mad, probably demanding for my release, and two: there was a small chance that Fury would come to his senses and remember I had just helped _stop_ Loki.

_Or do I call him dad?_ There was that little voice again torturing me with the brutal truth.

I pulled at my gloves anxiously. I did not want to think of him as my father. As you can imagine, I didn't want to be related to a villainous scumbag alien.

I started with that realization. He is an alien, so how in heck did I end up here, on Earth?

* * *

"I still can't believe Fury knocked her out and put her in a cage, she's not an animal!" Tony said for what seemed like the millionth time.

"Please, Mr. Stark," Selvig said exasperatedly, still not knowing what the billionaire was talking about, "you're repeating yourself."

The three scientists were working on the device that would take Thor back home to Asgard. Unfortunately, Tony was doing more talking than working.

"I can't believe I'm the only one besides Thor who cares about this," Tony said loudly, not allowing the other two scientists to get back to work.

"You're not the only one who cares," Bruce mumbled almost hoping Tony didn't hear him. He had to admit the strange little girl (that wasn't really a little girl) had definitely made an impact on him. He had almost completely lost it when he had heard what Fury had done.

"Well, you sure don't act like you care Big Green," Tony said. He finally started to get back to work, which would most likely have been interrupted in a few minutes by more ranting if Bruce hadn't stopped abruptly and headed for the door.

"I'm going to talk to Fury," he threw over his shoulder on his way out.

A few minutes after Banner had left, Selvig turned to Tony, "Are you happy now?"

"No, but I'm satisfied for the moment."

* * *

It had been maybe a couple hours since I had woken up, then after a while of maddening silence, I said some very colorful things to the empty room for a couple more hours. Once I had gotten that out of my system, I had sat quietly for maybe half an hour before getting up and pacing off nervous energy that had started to build up

Now I was propped against a black wall twirling marble sized Lanterns singing _Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star_ to myself, which must have looked overwhelmingly pathetic to anyone observing.

Suddenly there was a whirring sound of machinery and the door to my prison opened to admit Dr. Banner with an armful of supplies, including food.

I didn't know exactly how long I had gone without food but it was long enough that just the sight of food made my stomach growl. I was starving and had to restrain myself from tackling the man for his armful of goodies.

Instantly I dove into the disgusting cafeteria food, savoring every tasteless bite. "You are an angel, Dr. B!" I mumbled past a half masticated bite of food.

Along with the blessed food, the doctor had also got my pack. Once I was done eating, I made a sound of joy and grabbed for my beloved sack. I pulled out my blanket and hugged it to my chest as I hummed _Reunited and it Feels so Good_, all the while ignoring Bruce's raised eye brow.

"When is Fury going to let me out of here?" I asked, trying to sound flippant.

Bruce sighed, anger silently surging in him again. "He said not until he thinks he can trust you."

"Oh, then I'm never getting out. That man doesn't trust anyone," I said mordantly.

He heaved a shaky sigh. I looked at him and cringed when I saw that his hand had tremors as he took off his glasses. He cleaned them in a calming ritual that had probably become habit long ago.

"Okay, lets just not talk about this," I said solemnly. "Hey, I know! Why don't you show me some of your meditation techniques you told be about."

He chuckled wryly at my suggestion. "Do you think I need to calm down that bad?"

I chuckled myself. "I think we're both experiencing high amounts of stress right now."

* * *

It was maybe an hour after Bruce left, did I stop practicing the few techniques he showed me because in a way, I needed them more then he did. If I truly examined my mind thoroughly, I would find that I had more than just a few bats in the belfry. Honestly, it s a wonder I haven't started to act like Smeagol from the J.R.R. Tolkien books.

After an even longer amount of time, I found myself lying spread eagle on the floor staring at the ceiling.

I quickly sat up when I heard the telltale mechanical whirring of the door. I blinked in surprise when the door opened to admit Natasha Romanoff.

"What do you want?" I said a bit grumpily.

She made a gesture for me to follow. "Come on, lets go for a walk, and bring your stuff." "Oh, am I getting yard time? How nice," I said sarcastically as I shouldered my pack.

"Sometimes you remind me too much of Stark," she deadpanned.

As we walked down the corridor, I thought of making a break for it but I quickly discarded that idea because the situation might escalate and there could be a repeat of the last time I was at SHIELD. I really didn't want that and I'm sure neither did everybody else.

"You know you complicated things—actually you complicated things just by coming here," Natasha said cutting into my thoughts.

"Because The Lab is still after me?" I guessed, and the agent nodded in response.

"We just really don't know what to do with you, although Thor did invite you to come back to Asgard with him, seeing as you're technically part of the royal family."

I gave a harsh bark of laughter. "Not really an option. Maybe I'd go there for vacation, but from what I gathered, it would be a one way trip, I would be stuck there at least for a good while until the Asgardians fix their bridge."

Natasha tilted her head to the side in honest curiosity. "Why would that be such a bad thing? You've got someone chasing you here."

Her face didn't show it, but I was sure that I sensed a little motherly concern.

"I just don't want to go to some alien planet, you can understand that right?" I said a little defensively.

"Stark probably wouldn't understand; I bet he would give up all his tech just for one trip."

"Yeah, well I'm not Tony…and you brought him up for a reason didn't you?"

Natasha smirked at that. "You're good, and yes, I did. Stark, surprisingly enough, offered to watch over you."

I stopped right there in the middle of the hall and waited for Natasha to turn around to face me.

"You do all realize that I am not a kid, right? I can take care of myself," I said petulantly.

"We're just worried you'll end up in the wrong hands, and I'm sure you can understand that seeing what we just went through." I gave Natasha skeptical look and she continued explaining her point. "How many close calls have you had in these past year? We've counted three and that was with us trying our hardest to watch out for you."

I glared at the floor for a while then abruptly started walking, taking long fast paced strides, making Natasha work to keep up.

"Do you even know anything about The Lab?" I asked letting a tiny bit of weariness creep into my voice.

"Honestly, no. We don't really even know who they are. We just go on calling them by the name you gave us. No matter how unoriginal it is."

"Give me a break. It's not like I spent all my time thinking up names for the creeps."

There was a long stretch of silence before Natasha started back up. "You know, the deal that Tony made is pretty good. He has a more advanced security system than even SHIELD; you'd be safer there."

I stepped in front of Natasha making her stop again. "Why do you care about me, and don't lie I know you do."

She looked at me blankly and then glanced down. "I know what it's like to grow up in a cage…and have things you regret for the rest of you're life."


	19. Chapter 19: Theatrics

Chapter 19: Theatrics

"I want to talk to him again," I said for what might have been the third time.

Our little walk had continued and was taken outside on the top deck because the Helicarrier was now floating on the Atlantic.

As our discussions on the matter of where I should go after I got off this flying death trap progressed it eventually turned into something else completely (to be honest I did this on purpose; I willfully manipulated the conversation) and now we were arguing why I should not go interrogate the god of mischief and get answers about my life.

For at least ten minutes now Natasha had adamantly told me that Fury would not allow it.

Raven, why would you even want to? Natasha said now trying a new approach, He's an insane asshole; he's not your father, at least not really.

"If you are seriously doubting that he is father, it s true. I can't really explain it, but I know its true," I said flatly. I tried not to shy away from the f-word.

Natasha raised her eyebrows. "I'm surprised you're not more…distraught about that," she said.

"We may share genetic material, but that hardly makes me who I am. I read a study that stated that DNA only determines about ten percent of personality," I rattled out matter-of-factly.

"Look, he knows stuff about me," I said getting down to business. "I need to talk to him to find out what he knows." There was an edge of real desperation in those words. It was almost undetectable but there none the less.

Natasha tried staring me down, but I would not give. Finally, she sighed, apparently growing tired of our little walk.

"I'll talk to Fury, but he will not like this."

"Well, he can get over it because I don't give a rat's ass what he likes. He freaking locked me in a box for hours. I don't feel very sympathetic towards him right now."

Natasha rolled her eyes. "Do you have any other demands oh great daughter of royalty?" Natasha asked sarcastically.

I tried to pretend that didn't strike a nerve. "Yes, actually. I want the afore mentioned talk with Fury to happened right now and I want to be there," I said in a very much demanding manner.

Natasha's eyebrows shot up in disbelief. "You re joking, right?"

"Nope," I said popping the 'p'. I took off towards the entrance to the interior of the Helicarrier at that.

"Raven!" Natasha called after me. She quickly caught up to me and gave me a slight scowl of annoyance.

"I don't suppose I can stop you, but I have to worry for both yours and Fury's health. Him because he might have an aneurism and you because you might be shot on sight," she said humorlessly.

"Surely Fury doesn't hate me that much," I said a little worried because she really wasn't joking.

"I'm not worried that it'll be him that shoots you," Natasha said cryptically.

We were quiet for the rest of the way to the bridge.

When we entered Fury was seated at the conference table with one elbow propped on the table while his hand massaged his brow. He was the epitome of stress, and suddenly I felt a pang of gilt for the additional stress that I would most definitely bring him.

When he saw me with Romanoff he instantly sprang out of his seat with a scowl appearing on his face.

"What are you doing here?" he growled at me. He then turned his anger toward Natasha at my left. "I told you to keep her out of here."

"She insisted on speaking with you," Natasha said, throwing me under the buss.

Fury turned his one-eyed glare back to me. "Whatever it is that you want, the answer is no."

I dramatically threw my hands up in the air. "You don't even know what I want!" I whined.

"It's something about Loki isn t it?" he deadpanned.

I opened my mouth to refute his claim but quickly snapped it shut.

Taking a new approach, a charming smile stole over my face and I batted my eyelashes, trying exceedingly hard to look innocent and sweet. Natasha gave me a funny look, which I ignored, and Fury raised an eyebrow. "You know you're really good, sir. That is exactly the reason why you're the head of SHIELD."

He snorted and rolled his one eye. "You're going to have to do better than that."

"Come on, please? All I want to do is talk to him; how bad could that be?"

"The last time you had a little talk with him, you lied to me and you uncovered a secret that will not help your popularity with The Council," he said and then instantly regretted saying it.

"Who's The Council?" I asked genuinely curious.

"They're people that are higher than SHIELD and they _really_ don't like you," he said, hating every word that came out of his mouth, like he was divulging some big secret.

I thought for a moment on that. "Hmmm, Okay, I think we might have to talk more about that later, but for right now, lets get back to the topic at hand."

"My answer is still no."

I stared at him with slatted eyes for a moment before his death glare won the contest.

I sighed dramatically, making a show out of it. "Okay, Fury, I really didn't want to do this, but you forced my hand."

Fury took a step back, putting a hand on his gun and looking at me suspiciously. His surprise was hilarious when he saw my true intentions.

I got down on my knees, inching forward so I was right at his feet. I clasped my hands and held them above my head as I looked up at the director.

"_Please_, Fury, I'll _never_ bother you again if you _just_ let me talk to him!"

I was making a scene and several agents looked up from their work to watch.

"Get back to work!" Fury yelled at the agents who quickly complied for fear of their boss.

"Raven, get up, this is pathetic," Natasha said with a hint of disdain.

I gave a martyred wail, threw my hands up in the air once more, and fell face first onto the floor. I covered my head with my arms, making pathetic sobs.

I glanced up at him and he was looking down at me reproachfully with his arms crossed over his chest.

I was really throwing all I could into the little performance, yet Fury was not swayed by either the attempt to embarrass him or the appeal to pity for my pathetic scene (I already knew that probably wouldn't work, so it was more a performance to try to embarrass him). I was just hoping he would give up and let me do what I want to get me to stop.

I sighed and pulled myself up to my feet. "Okay, Fury, I didn't think that would work anyway, but I _need_ to talk to Loki," I allowed a tiny bit of genuine desperation to enter my voice.

He must have noticed because his resolve softened a little. "Why?"

"I _need_ to talk to him," I started out calmly, "I _need_ to know what he knows about me! I _need_ to know what the_ hell I am!_" My voice rose in pitch and volume with each word to where by the end of the sentence I was practically shouting.

I sucked in a lungful, and looked down at my feet, feeling a little sheepish for my outburst. That made a bitter smile curve my lips. I could put on a drama, lay on the theatrics, but when I show any real emotion I get embarrassed. How ironic.

I looked back up at Fury, looking him in the eye. "Please, for my sanity's sake, let me go talk to him. This may be the one and only chance I ever get to find out how I came to be," I paused thinking for a moment then said, "And if you think about it this is all what SHIELD is about, right? Collecting and cataloging information."


	20. Chapter 20: Full Disclosure

Chapter 20: Full Disclosure

My life is strange, so, so very strange. For example: ten minutes ago when Nick Fury actually said I could go see my psychotic alien father. And also the fact that I have a psychotic alien father.

Was I always destine to have such a weird and messed up life, or was that just the roll of the dice? No, I suppose I was always fated to have a life like the one I do, or…maybe not. I don't know, but I may find out very soon.

Natasha and I turned the last corner and the door to Loki's cell was in sight.

Fury had, once again, not let me go alone, making Natasha be my escort. But maybe this time was because he was worried for my sake? Were there people here he didn't think he could trust? Maybe it was this council. I wonder, were they the people who sent the missile?

I'm going to have to worry about that later, though because we were at the door to Loki's cell.

Natasha turned to me. "Good luck in there. I hope you find what you're looking for."

"Thanks," I said turning to the door. I reached for the handle, grabbing it and then…stopping.

"Are you going to go in?" Natasha said softly, almost in a coddling way.

I wrinkled my nose in disdain and sent her a glare. I know this kind of attitude was uncalled for, but in my defense I was scared and nervous and excited all at the same time, but most of all I was desperate.

I yanked the door open with undue rigor, and walked in, becoming more calm with every step. Well, not really; more like I affected a calm attitude rater than actually having one.

Loki laid on his back, his eyes closed. He didn't move at all when I approached, but I knew he was not sleeping.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" he said with his eyes still closed. The sudden intrusion of his voice in the dead silence made me jump and I let out a tiny gasp. Loki smirked at that. He opened his eyes and started to sit up.

I clenched my jaw and then unclenched, realizing that he would notice.

He looked at me and I noticed there was a new light to his eyes that hadn't been there before. It almost looked like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. In fact he actually looked a few years younger.

_Maybe he's _glad_ that it's all over with and done, like he never really wanted this in the first place._

As soon as the idea popped into my head I dismissed it. It was completely ridiculous; why would he go to so much trouble—_travel across the universe—_just to fail?

"I need answers. My first question: how do Asgardians age?" I said bluntly.

He tilted his head to one side. "Interesting question. Would you also like for me to go over—as I believe the humans call it—the birds and the bees; that is what fathers do am I right?"

My cheeks heated and I was sure I was blushing heavily. "Just answer the question," I ground out.

"Oh, fine. Asgardians of course age slower than Midgardians because we have longer lives, but until adulthood, we age faster than any other time in life," Loki said. I noticed that he just barely flinched every time he said "we". Maybe that was because he knew he would be a prisoner in Asgard soon?

"Numbers on that?"

"I believe around four hundred Midgardian years to reach adulthood and five thousand years over all."

I wrinkled my brow in confusion, and shook my head. "That can't be right," I mumbled to myself, I age more than twice as fast…" I trailed off thinking of an earlier idea I had.

"Oh, no, don t tell me…I'm a mutt!" I flopped into the only chair in the room and groaned.

"If that is how you wish to put it, then yes," Loki deadpanned.

"Ah, _shit_!" I cursed loudly. I buried my face in my hands for a moment. For some reason, this was the most mortifying revelation of all.

I looked back up at the alien and said mordantly, "Well, I guess that explains how I ended up on Earth."

I jumped up from my chair and started pacing, the motion calming me a bit.

I thought of my next question, and sighed when I realized what had to be asked next.

"What happened to my mother?'

He had been wearing a slightly amused expression before, but then in an instant it was gone and his face was completely blank. Despite this, he did not hesitate to answer my question. "She is dead."

I gulped. "S-so what happened? How did…" I trailed off not knowing how to finish the sentence.

He shifted uncomfortably and didn't answer immediately. "You were more than two months late and still not ready. It was simply too much for her."

I bit my lip viciously until tasted the tangy metallic flavor of blood. _I was killing people before I was even born, _I thought hatefully.

I was unable to talk for several moments not trusting my voice. When I did talk it was thin and reedy. "Why Bella; why did you name me that?" It was a dumb question, but, again, it only seemed fitting to ask at the moment.

He sent me an unreadable look and answered in a neutral tone, "Because it was what your mother wanted to name you."

There was a long pause before I started again with another question. "So, I guess you hung around for a while. Do you know what happened; how "The Lab" got me?"

There was another long pause in which he shifted uncomfortably several times, before he finally decided to answer my question. "I watched over you for almost ten years, but I was not your guardian. I merely visited from time to time and moved you to another home when need be."

He paused for a moment. His eyes flicked downward for a second, and his voice was quieter when he spoke again, "There was an incident at the orphanage I had placed you in at the time; a fire started in your room. Many had perished, and you were unaccounted for. I assumed that you had died in the fire along with the rest. Now I believe that the fire was a cover up, and that was when they had taken you."

"Do you remember where or when," I drawled thoughtfully, looking down at my fidgeting hands.

"St. Mary Joseph's Orphanage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1984," he deadpanned. Even though his voice was completely neutral, I could swear there was disappointment in his eyes like he knew of my ulterior motives and disapproved.

In truth that was what I cared about the most. I needed to know when and where The Lab had entered my life. I needed the clues that might lead me to the truth behind The Lab.

I sucked in a deep breath and was about to leave before I thought of another thing to ask. "How did they even know I was special?" This was something I was genuinely curious about; how could The Lab have known about my powers. Had they appeared when I was just an infant?

His eyebrows were raised but his eyes were on the floor. "Well, in that span of ten years there were a few strange…occurrences, a couple that I even observed myself."

He took a big pause, in which I wanted to scream for him to spit it out.

"On one instant you were crying profusely and the temperature in the room started to rise drastically and suddenly the shirt of the caretaker that had been holding you burst into flame. I would not like to think of what would have happened had I not been there. The other time I saw one of these occurrences it was the exact opposite; you were utterly calm and the walls were covered in a sheet of frost it was so cold in the room."

"So…is it definitely not normal for someone to develop powers like this so young?"

"Is it normal: no. Does it happen: certainly; I am one of those," Loki said, and pridefully I might add. "Though it is rare, some people are born with unusually strong connections to Yggdrasil; most have to forage a strong connection through hard work."

I gave a bitter laugh with an edge of hysteria. "What else in the myths are true: Heimdall the gatekeeper with the all seeing peepers? But wait if he were real how did you keep me hidden?" I asked sarcastically, not expecting an answer.

"There are ways of hiding oneself from Heimdall's accursed piercing gaze," Loki said cryptically.

I blinked in shock (you'd think I would be used to this sort of thing already). "Wait you mean… Then how _did_ you keep me hidden?"

Loki smirked mischievously. "A spell of my own creation. I made it permanent by connecting it to you're own power," he said.

I threw my hands up in the air in resignation. "Okay, I'm done; I've got enough weird for one day, thank you very much."

I got up to leave and was already holding the handle of the door when, suddenly, and completely to my surprise, Loki's voice sounded behind me, "You should come back to Asgard with…me."

I turned back around slowly.

"Why?" I asked, my lip curled slightly in distain.

"The ones who would take you and torture you are still out there are they not? You would be safe in Asgard."

"And you would have me believe you're telling me this because you care about me?" I said scathingly.

"I have always cared!" Loki said raising his voice to nearly a shout. I would have been greatly surprised by his outburst if I hadn't been half crazy a the moment.

"Oh, really? Then why did you not take me back to Asgard with you when I was a baby? Huh? Because you were ashamed that you had an affair with a human; little more than an animal, right? But I wouldn't think you would be particularly ashamed because you have committed bestiality before."

He was not angry—or he at least didn't look angry—like I thought he would be, more like just annoyed. "One: it was not an affair; I was not married at the time, and two: I am honestly hurt that you would think so little of me.

My brow wrinkled. "Then what about Sleip—you know what, just-just never mind."

"I did not bring you back to Asgard, because I became paranoid after what befell my other children. My eldest, Hel, was banished to Nefilhiem and now she is half mad and blames me for her plight."

I shrugged my shoulders unsympathetically. "Couldn't be worse than having people torture you day in and day out for almost fifteen years."

He fixed me with almost a rabid look that made me squirm. "I suppose not, but could it have been worse than my son Narfi being ripped apart by his own brother when he was turned into an angry wolf…by someone who had a grudge on _me!_" Loki said furiously. His voice had steadily risen and his eyes became wild, then all at once he was calm again. He looked away like he was ashamed of that little outburst, and I got the feeling that he hadn't meant to talk about his sons.

"Bad things had happened to my children in the past. I became paranoid," he repeated.

Loki paused and sat there staring into space for several moments before he spoke again, "But I've known for a long time that it was a mistake to leave you on Midgard." His voice was almost a whisper and his eyes were unfocused and distant.

"So now you're trying to make up for your mistake," I said in an equally quiet voice.

His eyes refocused and he turned a piercing gaze on me. "Yes."

I walked over to the lonely chair again and flopped down. I clasped my hands in front of me and leaned my elbows on the arms of the chair.

I sat there thinking for what might have been a full ten minutes. Finally I said, "There are lots of people in Asgard that work with magic right?" I asked putting air quotes around "magic"

"Yes…" Loki said somewhat curious for the reason of the question.

"Someone there can probably teach me how to control my powers better, right?"

"Yes," he now said with a raised eyebrow.

"Then that… is the reason why I said 'yes'."

At that, I again got up and started to leave. Halfway out, Loki's amused laughter sounded behind me.

* * *

I slammed the door behind me and leaned on it, sucking in a deep breath. I stood there breathing deeply for several moments until Natasha cut in.

"Are you going to be alright?" she asked softly.

I glanced at her and nodded.

"Anything you'd like to share…or do I have to review the footage?" she prodded gently.

She waited patiently for me to reply, and I finally did but I'm sure it wasn't what she had hoped it would be. "I think maybe just for right now I should talk with Thor and…then break the news to everyone else personally."

Natasha looked down, and cleared her throat awkwardly.

"What?" I asked suspiciously.

"Well…" she said, "I just got word that…Tony was actually watching it live with the rest of the team in the lab; he still has his hooks in our system."

I stared at her dumbly for a moment then I shrieked, "_WHAT?_"


End file.
